SEPTEMBER IS Bay State Bike Month, where riders from across the state come together to join a variety of community events promoting all the joys of bicycling throughout Massachusetts, including town-wide rides like the Tour de Newton, a bike commuter breakfast in Holyoke, a Cub Scout “bike rodeo” in Worcester, a fundraiser ride for connecting the pathways around New Bedford, and bike giveaways in Mattapan.

Over 65 bike-friendly events are happening all across the Commonwealth this month. These events bring encouragement and community-building. But this year, we have an opportunity to do something more. Now is the time for legislators and the Baker administration to make progress on transportation policy that will contribute to solving our climate crisis, improve public health and safety all across the state, reduce roadway congestion, and improve equity for disadvantaged communities.

We can do all these big things by recognizing that the humble bicycle is a core element of our future transportation network, not just an “alternative” form of transportation. Bay State Bike Month should encourage state leaders to start checking off the list of legislative, regulatory and infrastructure actions that are overdue to improve transportation safety and connectivity across the state.

Of course, as the pandemic has clearly shown, bikes are great for recreation and physical and mental health. They are a clean, enjoyable way to get outdoors and exercise, especially for older adults, youth, and families. So we can and should make recreational cycling more abundant and accessible.

But bikes are historically and primarily intended as transportation; indeed, the original bike advocates were pushing for paving roads in the 1890s, decades before the first automobiles were hitting the streets. And history has caught up to the need for non-polluting, efficient, and economical transportation that only bikes can deliver. Bikes are not toys to be given up when someone turns 16 and can get the keys to a car. They are a key element of a serious transportation strategy.

Our coalitions are working with fellow advocates, state legislators, local leaders, and the governor’s team to pursue better biking for work, school, and daily living. Here are five ways Massachusetts can and should create a safe and sound transportation solution for our residents.

E-bikes

Electric assist bicycles are a game-changer for so many people. They allow riders to travel greater distances and over more difficult terrain than conventional bikes, and provide assistance to those who may have physical limitations. On an e-bike, a 10- or 20-mile commute is not just feasible – it’s attractive, especially to the millions of residents who live within easy access to a rail-trail and other protected bicycle infrastructure. A bill relative to electric bicycles (H.3457and S.2309) will define electric bicycles and standardize regulations across Massachusetts. This law will clarify the laws around how these e-bikes are defined, better allowing jurisdictions to regulate the various classes of e-bikes, and match Massachusetts with 46 other states and federal standards.

Electric bicycle rebates (H.3262) will help lower the cost barrier for electric bicycles by providing tiered rebates up to $750 for low- and moderate-income earners, potentially provided at the point-of-sale or through a voucher program similar to the state’s MOR-EV program. Not only would it help those most in need of an electric bicycle (and help them choose biking over driving), but local bicycle shops would benefit from increased business.

Commuter Benefits

If we as a Commonwealth truly want to encourage biking, we need at a minimum to have parity with driving, not just with infrastructure but also with financial incentives. A bill relative to commuter transit benefits (H.3088 and S.1890) adds bicycling to pre-tax benefits claimed for commuting, specifically costs for bike share membership, purchasing a bicycle, repairs and upgrades, and storage. Today, anyone that drives to work can have their parking subsidized through tax policy, but the same incentive does not exist for people taking clean, sustainable, and active transportation to work. By enacting these two bills, the state would provide a minimum economic benefit to people who bike to work.

Climate protection 

It’s undeniable that this summer’s extreme weather events, and the tragedy and devastation to communities across the country and around the world, are made worse by climate change. Transportation carbon emissions are now the leading contributor to global warming, and account for 40 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the state. As a non-polluting mode of transportation, it is urgent that we make it safe, attractive, and convenient for each of us to choose a bicycle to replace a car trip.

Transportation Justice 

We know that bicycling is a low-to-no-cost form of transportation, and provides a multitude of health and wellness benefits. However, like much of our transportation system, the safe bicycling infrastructure and resources for education and encouragement are not being shared equitably.

So as a matter of transportation justice, if we are going to “Build Back Better” as a Commonwealth, policymakers and political leaders should dedicate American Rescue Plan funds to make tangible progress in our underserved communities, using many of the bills already mentioned. We also need to mandate safe bicycling and driving conditions by creating streets with protected bike lanes through Chapter 90 funding and MassDOT’s Complete Streets and Shared Streets programs.

Roadway safety

Safety is a paramount concern for cyclists, and is often cited as a reason people don’t ride. We get it: if you fear for your life due to unsafe infrastructure, you won’t want to ride! This is a solvable problem, and the state has taken steps over the years to enact policies and funding mechanisms to support Complete Streets, Shared Streets and Spaces, and investments to expand our pathway networks.

Legislation filed by Rep. Michael Moran of Boston and Sen. Will Brownsberger of Belmont will help improve conditions for cyclists on our roads. An act to reduce traffic fatalities (H.3549 and S.2273) will finally legislate for Massachusetts riders the safety of three-foot distance from passing motorists, require side guards and improved mirrors on large trucks, standardize crash reporting, allow for lowering the speed limits on roadways, and generally make our roads safer in a common-sense bill with widespread support. It’s past time it became law to increase safety for vulnerable road users.

What’s next?

We have proven successes already in place this legislative session, with support from the Baker administration and the Legislature for allowing funding for rail-trails using local Community Preservation Act funds, greater investment in MassTrails and Complete Streets, and proposing $100 million in Federal ARPA funds for trails and parks.

Looking forward, we believe that progress on these five issues will help everyone, and support each individual rider to bike more places, more safely, and more often. We need the Legislature to step up by passing these crucial bills. This is where everyone can make a difference, whether by participating in Bay State Bike Month, or asking your elected officials to support this bike-friendly legislation.

Galen Mook is the executive director of MassBike, a statewide advocacy organization working since 1977 to supportbetter bicycling for everyone in Massachusetts. Josh Ostroff is the interim director of Transportation for Massachusetts, a coalition of over 100 member and partner organizations working towards equitable, clean, and modernized mobility across the Commonwealth.

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THE PANDEMIC has upended many things, including how many of us get around. One difference is a big increase in walking and bicycling. In every community, people are getting outdoors more often, which is good for our health and a change for the better.

But many of our roads and sidewalks were designed primarily with cars in mind. Retrofitting streets to be more welcoming and safer for people on bikes and foot has become more urgent.

Massachusetts can do something this month to encourage biking and walking. As legislators continue to wrangle over what to include in the final version of the transportation bond bill, they should absolutely increase funding for Complete Streets. Both the House and the Senate propose $50 million in funding for this popular and effective program.

Based on the need, a higher amount is justifiable; but that is unlikely in this environment and without more funding for transportation in general. $50 million will continue a successful program at current levels.

It is also important to set aside a portion of Complete Streets funding to ensure equity, such that at least one-third is targeted to communities with incomes below the average for the Commonwealth.

What are Complete Streets? Technically, they are roads that are designed according to contemporary guidelines to promote safety and accessibility for users of all modes.

In practice, Complete Streets are true public spaces that work for everybody who uses them. Whether you are walking, cycling, using transit, driving, shopping, or enjoying the outdoors. And whether you are 8 or 80, and regardless of your ability, a Complete Street is one that will welcome you.

Complete Streets have been shown to improve the value of property, business activity, health of people, and our communities. Massachusetts has endorsed Complete Streets in how it designs and builds state roads, and has encouraged local governments to do the same. In fact, more than half of all our cities and towns have an approved Complete Streets policy.

More recently, MassDOT has stepped up Complete Streets during the COVID-19 crisis. The “Shared Streets and Spaces” grant program, introduced last spring, funded projects that could be designed and implemented in just weeks or months. The recently announced Winter Streets and Spaces grants will do the same, with a requirement that projects are constructed by May 31. These grant programs fast-track ideas to make our outdoor spaces safer for walking, biking, and dining.

The Massachusetts Department of Transportation awarded just over $10 million in 123 Shared Streets and Spaces grants to 103 cities and towns around the state. But underscoring the need and interest, this is just under one-third of the $34 million that was requested from 279 municipalities.

Complete Streets is now the standard for how roads are designed in Massachusetts, and the appeal of these tactical programs shows how much things have changed in just a few years. MassDOT has demonstrated that they can get this money out the door quickly, while cities and towns are stepping up and constructing popular projects.

But we should be implementing this vision at a much faster pace.

A case in point: the $570,000 awarded to Springfield in Complete Streets grants over the last several years is not meeting the need.

Starting in 2014, Springfield residents working with City officials developed a Complete Streets policy and prioritization plan.  The aim was to indicate that Springfield is a friendly place for riding bicycles with miles of new bicycle lanes and ready bicycle parking at libraries and parks. The team prioritized walkability improvements, including adding enhanced crosswalks. With MassDOT Complete Streets funding, Springfield has achieved nearly all of the projects included in its original five-year plan and is currently developing the list of next priorities. But these won’t be able to be implemented until there is additional MassDOT Complete Streets funding.

So while the Complete Streets program is a success on paper, in reality it is now at risk, because the money for this valuable program has run out. The final bond bill is being negotiated by a six-member conference committee before both branches vote it up or down, and the bill is sent to the governor for his signature.

Where both branches have settled on the same amount of funding, a higher amount than $50 million is unlikely, even though the program is stretched to meet demand. For the Complete Streets program to continue, it is critical for the Legislature to finish their negotiations and include this funding, and to ensure that a portion is set aside for lower income cities and towns.

Betsy Johnson works at WalkBike Springfield and Josh Ostroff is partnerships director at Transportation for Massachusetts.

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This article is part of a series entitled The Future of Mobility, a joint project of CommonWealth and Meeting of the Minds, a San Francisco-based organization that seeks to build alliances around urban sustainability. On June 20, 2017, 120 mobility leaders will convene in Cambridge to discuss the future of mobility in the Boston region. (If you are interested in attending the invitation-only summit, please fill out this application.)

The accelerating changes in transportation have disrupted established services and brought choices and challenges to consumers, companies, government, and advocates. And there’s a growing awareness of the connectedness between transportation and climate, social equity, and health.

Our coalition, Transportation for Massachusetts, has worked to stay at the forefront of the technology-fueled mobility revolution, and our recent report, Fast Forward, highlights the ways in which the public sector should steer change to help solve social and environmental problems – not exacerbate them.

We can’t count on the convenience of smartphone apps to provide affordable and convenient transportation for everybody, or ensure that autonomous vehicles are climate-friendly. Those are not goals of the free market. Solving these problems is going to take concerted effort by policymakers.

Transportation pioneer, author, and Zipcar cofounder Robin Chase generously wrote the introduction to Fast Forward, and introduced the report at an October conference in Boston’s Seaport District.

We caught up a couple of weeks later for breakfast at the Andala Coffee House in Cambridge, Massachusetts – a fitting venue, as the Andala was where both Zipcar and Goloco, a share-a-ride app, were conceived. Over Arabic coffee, tea, and omelets, we took stock of recent history and what’s next in transportation.

JOSH OSTROFF: What are the priorities in making transportation work for more people, more fairly, more sustainably? People are often resistant to change unless and until it affects their self-interest. So what’s the message that the public should be getting about the changes and challenges in front of us? And what does that tell us about the politics of transforming mobility?

ROBIN CHASE: Zipcar was a great example of how, given a travel option that is cheaper, more convenient, and much easier to use than what they had before, people will embrace it.  Not because of environmental or social benefits, but because it was faster, cheaper, and easier.  So the challenge is to make more transportation alternatives to personal car ownership that way.

As we look at transformation, the impediments are regulations that protect and re-enforce the status quo.  Industries and models with powerful incentives to maintain and not disrupt their business are also obstacles. So the biggest barrier is effectively the status quo.

The biggest conflict is between the old and new ways of doing things.  Too often, government is aligned to protect established industries and uses the excuse of increased economic costs to bolster their argument. For example, the state of Florida – the Sunshine State – has among the lowest levels of solar energy adoption because government, through its regulatory powers, is supporting the interests of the existing utility company over the interests of residents. I also don’t underestimate the power of intransigence – of maintaining things as they are.  At the neighbor level, too, many people don’t want change. They don’t often rethink their existing patterns of travel and consumption, and have accepted congestion – or warmer weather – as just the way things are.

So in that context, Zipcar was successful in part because it didn’t need any government action and didn’t ask people to imagine carsharing. We just did it, and could do so within the current legal system (license plates were a drama, however: residential or commercial?). Uber and Lyft, on the other hand, launched by breaking many rules and causing a lot of strife. Certainly, cities are within their rights to protect public good and safety – requiring safe vehicles and drivers with adequate insurance coverage; but when government acts to protect an existing industry, that hinders evolution, problem solving, and innovation. As for whether people will embrace change: when the new solution is better, we have seen that they will. That’s not a barrier.

OSTROFF: What about the value of existing employment? Not everyone is ready to evolve; taxi drivers have to feed their families.

CHASE: An Uber job is not the same as a taxi driver’s job. But the solution is not to demand that all employment be full-time jobs with benefits; that is the old paradigm. It is true that our social safety nets and workplace rules are currently tied to protecting full-time workers.  And for years, we’ve seen companies struggle to afford paying benefits – witness recent lawsuits against Wal-Mart, and FedEx. But today, the Internet exists, making it easy to coordinate many small transactions. The result is the rise of a new organizational structure for which Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb are poster children. Companies are increasingly platform based, with labor outside of the company, separated from the social safety net.  The solution is to take the benefits and regulations we as a society value, now associated with full-time labor  — and extend them to part-time labor. As workplaces change, our social constructs must adapt. Given some basic security, this new way of work offers greater individual freedom and opportunity. The new social contract should unleash innovation, not constrain it. Let’s not make personal well-being and security the price we pay for economic progress. We need them both.

OSTROFF: What about the tradeoffs we make to address the risks to our climate? How do we balance our perceived short-term and our actual long-term interests?

CHASE: We are at a moment when the world needs to evolve quickly to resolve the issues provoked by climate change.  We should be thinking in government and in our own lives about how to introduce fluidity and dynamism.  Rigidity must go.  The status quo is nothing to celebrate. Let’s make it possible to evolve economics quickly and safely, and get on with it.

OSTROFF: The status quo won’t be the status quo for long, because the changing climate will force us to adapt in ways we may not foresee, and congestion will make established travel norms uneconomical.  So will there be a place for car ownership?

CHASE: In the urban context, car ownership is an inhibitor. Today, it puts a huge burden on household budgets and people. Tomorrow, we should be able to choose what’s right for each and every trip. The future I see will involve fleets of autonomous vehicles that are electric and shared (I call them FAVES). Zipcar showed how technology could make it easy to share a car. UberPool and LyftLine have used smartphones to make ride-sharing easy. Autonomous vehicles, in the form of FAVES, will make the last vestiges of any inconveniences of sharing disappear, and they will also make shared transportation economically possible in lighter population densities than is possible today.

OSTROFF: We’ve long associated freedom with being behind the wheel.

CHASE: In our real reality, that’s just an ad slogan. Driving around a city or commuting to and from work in traffic doesn’t make me feel free; it makes me feel imprisoned. Increasingly, car ownership is a burden, not an asset.  It’s not enabling freedom for households to devote 18 percent or more of their income just to own a car, or always having to drive your kids or parents around. Car ownership is not liberation.  But pay-as-you-go shared autonomous transportation will bring freedom. I won’t have to pay attention to driving. And if we make the right policy decisions about autonomous vehicles (i.e. make them shared), we’ll need a lot fewer cars, opening up street space to better, safer, and more pleasant walking and biking conditions. I’m looking forward to being able to confidently nip around town on my bike for short trips. And school age children can, too.

OSTROFF: There’s a big investment in the status quo with public transit, not just private cars. So how does the concept of fluidity work with traditional fixed-route systems in public transportation?

CHASE: For densely populated metropolitan areas, which are getting more dense, there is still a clear benefit to heavy transit infrastructure on fixed routes, or dedicated lanes. These trains and buses will move faster through traffic than independent vehicles that will have to deal with intersections and pedestrians. Investments around fixed routes connecting highly populated urban centers and corridors will persist. But not every transit connection can or should be fixed. I think autonomous vehicles will take the place of all bus routes, although from a real estate investment perspective, on-demand FAVES won’t guarantee the timeless stability of built heavy infrastructure. This new soft infrastructure could be moved at any time and will definitely change the real estate investment calculus. Exactly how remains to be seen. At the same time, autonomous vehicles will be connecting places that used to be car dependent or fell “off the grid.” These places will now have new and greater value. Autonomous vehicles can help in the coming transition, lowering the barriers for access to “public” transportation. I put quotes around that word “public” because it might be private “public transport.”

OSTROFF: Autonomous vehicles are ripe for regulation, and many states and cities are taking the first steps. How should public sector regulation work? When does that kick in, since we are at the dawn of this new age?

CHASE: There is a lot of discussion about regulation of autonomous vehicles.  What’s too much and too soon? We don’t want to stifle innovation, but there is a public interest here. We can state clearly that we have spent 100 years with personal cars and have learned, particularly in cities, that we need to better manage these metal boxes on scarce pavement. So let’s apply those lessons. Rules around access and congestion are still in play. We look to the public sector to regulate where there is scarcity – of roads, for example – because the free market goes towards the demands of commerce, and not necessarily human need.

OSTROFF: We tend to use yesterday’s technology as a reference for tomorrow – such as horseless carriages or driverless cars. But what will a driverless car look like?

CHASE: It won’t have a front and back end. It’s hard to say what it will look like. The fundamental piece of the equation is that when you take out the driver, it upends the economics of the trip and it transforms what we think of as a car and how and where we use it.  The economic threshold of making a car trip becomes almost zero, so there are many more trips possible, to and from many more places for different people with different needs. This reality – that the marginal cost of moving a car around will only be a couple of dollars an hour – is what gives me nightmares in the urban context.  Forgot your coat at home? Send the car back to pick it up. Why pay for parking, even at a meter, when it is cheaper to just keep the car circling the block until you are ready to get back in? From a retail perspective, Amazon will warehouse their goods on our streets to give you 15 minute delivery, and what little sidewalk retail there is left will simply move into a car and drive to its customers. These are discussions we have to start having with communities. What do we want our cities and streets to look like?

OSTROFF: What about rural communities and residents? We can’t leave people behind who choose or need to live far from urban centers.

CHASE: The AV equation in rural towns is a different cost-benefit relationship because there is plenty of parking and roads are mostly uncongested. AVs will bring safety benefits to rural and high speed driving. Traffic deaths will no longer be the number one killer of people between the ages of 15 and 25.  Retail AVs might make great sense in rural areas where shopping is far away. In rural areas, AVs will provide the flexibility to serve distant people more economically, and to provide better access for youth and for the elderly.  If we can rent an AV for about $5 AN hour in a rural area, we solve a lot of problems. Cities will see a transition to AVs sooner because the first vehicles will be expensive, will demand more intensive use to be economical, and will likely be restricted to certain geographies and speeds. But there are many economic benefits for a rural transportation evolution as well.

OSTROFF: Can we schedule a follow up interview in an autonomous vehicle?

CHASE: Have your people call my people!

Josh Ostroff is the Interim Director of Transportation for Massachusetts, a statewide coalition working to modernize mobility. He’s a resident of Natick, Massachusetts, and a long-time public official.

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Transportation visioning has been on our minds lately, especially after our two organizations – The Alliance for Business Leadership and Transportation for Massachusetts – teamed up this past March at The Alliance’s daylong problem-solving event, ABL Leader Lab, to coordinate a track devoted to transportation issues. Nearly 200 business and civic leaders came together at Leader Lab to tackle big questions, such as the one we posed about transportation:

How does Massachusetts both shore up its current infrastructure and create the modern agencies and systems we need to compete in the 21st century?

Among many ambitious ideas, there was clear consensus around one answer: vision. Almost to a person, the leaders in the room concluded that in order to effect big change we need a big, shared vision.

So in addition to hope, we – the business community, advocates, public officials, taxpayers – must promote a direction and a goal for transportation in the Commonwealth. A vision. Focus40 promises to be a strong first step toward defining that direction and goal.

It’s not easy to focus on the future when the present seems grim. For most of us, we just hope to get to work or school on time. But transportation improvements can take decades, so it’s just not enough to fix the T’s troubles today; we need to be competitive tomorrow. And as we saw at Leader Lab, looking ahead with a sense of hope comes naturally to many of us, even though the daily experience of MBTA users can be dispiriting.

And that’s our strength. Massachusetts is a state of dreamers and doers. We are creating the future in life sciences, materials, design, and culture even as we tackle today’s challenges. Heck, we gave the world the chocolate chip cookie! We’re not done innovating.

Focus40 is kicking off with an open house and a panel discussion, before everyone rolls up their sleeves in the weeks and months ahead for a plethora of meetings, public sessions, and opportunities for input. The folks at the MBTA will receive no shortage of advice as to how best to pull this vision together, but the discussion at ABL Leader Lab yielded some key insights that are worth sharing:

• Don’t reinvent the wheel. Other public transportation systems are leading the world with incredibly exciting, efficient initiatives, from free transit service in congested downtowns in Denver and Salt Lake City, to gold-standard bus rapid transit systems in Brazil, Peru, and Colombia, to a focus on sustainability in Denmark, India, and China. Massachusetts should learn from them, incorporate best practices, and adapt any findings to meet local needs.

• Use public transportation as a weapon in the fight against climate change. As Massachusetts seeks to reduce our carbon emissions, public transportation must contribute by getting cars off the roads and cutting greenhouse gasses.

• Embrace technology and innovation. Whether it’s the “Where’s my bus?” app, the hugely popular countdown signs on T platforms, or something new and disruptive that hasn’t been thought of yet, technology and innovation can improve public transportation’s efficiency, and customer satisfaction.

• Keep equity top of mind. It’s no secret that access to transportation often translates to access to economic opportunity. Investing in underserved communities can spur economic growth, create jobs, and support businesses.

• Think bigger. Yes, think bigger about what the MBTA can be 25 years from now, but also think bigger than the MBTA. The Commonwealth’s entire transportation infrastructure is in desperate need of a vision – one that includes, but is not limited to, the T. Residents in central and western Massachusetts, the Cape, Islands, South Coast, and Merrimack Valley all have a stake in our transportation future.

Seneca, the Roman philosopher and statesman, once said, “To the person who does not know where he wants to go, there is no favorable wind.” Massachusetts is approaching a point where we must have the leadership and competitive will to know where we want to go. In other words, we need a vision, and we need hope.

Jesse Mermell is president of The Alliance for Business Leadership. Josh Ostroff is partnerships director at Transportation for Massachusetts. MBTA’s Focus40 public process kicks off at at Northeaster’s Curry Student Center, 360 Huntington Ave, starting at 5PM on May 24, with details here. 

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