The Longfellow Bridge construction project has been one of the area’s consistent features since I moved to Beacon Hill around five years ago. It was a long journey, one filled with train delays, overnight road closures, unexpected potholes in the bike lane, and more. But to my great surprise the project ended just a few months ago and the new and improved bridge opened to the public for full-time use.
The bridge boasts a couple of new features that are important for bike safety. The first is a series of plastic posts placed directly on the dividing line between the bike lane and car traffic. As I understand, these posts are the source of some minor controversy and at one time I was under the impression that these would remain on the bridge only temporarily. However, nothing has changed and it therefore seems like I was mistaken. I see these posts as an improvement because they seem to help drivers stay in their lane – I never have close calls anymore on the Longfellow Bridge where I feel a driver’s mirrors zip past my left shoulder. Let’s hope this positive result of the construction project remains a permanent element of the bridge.
The second feature is a radar unit that tracks a driver’s speed as a car passes the midpoint of the bridge. Above the display is the city speed limit – 25 MPH. It’s interesting to me that on this bridge that links my two biking cities, there is no ambiguity about the speed limit – both Boston and Cambridge have recently implemented 25 MPH as their official citywide maximum. Both cities, it seems, have decided that there are real benefits to keeping all drivers at or below 25 MPH. But what exactly are these benefits? I came across a little research the other day that suggests the answer is safety. This research found that a car hitting a pedestrian at 36 to 45 MPH is four times more likely to kill the pedestrian than a collision between 26 to 30 MPH.
Perhaps this puts me into a minority but I feel the speed limit has far more potential as an important safety feature than the dividing posts. There are two obvious problems with my position. First, I am assuming that the biker who is hit by a car traveling below 25 MPH will be able to walk away from the collision. This is a big assumption but speaks to an important consideration about safety research that measures mortality risk. If the chances of survival increase but only guarantee a poor quality of life, it’s probably more important in this specific context to focus on measures that prevent collisions rather than encourage drivers to slow down before running someone over.
The second problem is much more immediate – no one seems to be actually following the speed limit. It’s the aforementioned radar unit that tells this story, and it doesn’t matter toward which city the car is driving. It seems that anytime I bike or walk past the unit, cars are constantly zipping past, leaving only the digitized evidence of misdemeanor in their wake – 31, 37, 42 miles per hour. The number always seems to blink down at me as I walk past – what are you gonna do about it? I’m toying with the idea of sitting on the bridge for an hour or so sometime and recording all the speed numbers but I don't think such a silly measure is required to make my point – a safety feature is useless anytime it is ignored. As long as this remains the case on the Longfellow Bridge, it will remain those plastic posts that deserve all the credit for any safety improvements.
