Cheung suggested focusing more on creating a net zero recycling program in Cambridge, and Kelley advocated for creating a more “adaptive” Cambridge. Although the effects of Hurricane Sandy mostly bypassed the city, Kelley highlighted that if the city had felt the full possibly brunt of the storm, large parts of Cambridge would have been flooded and the city would not have the infrastructure in place to best handle it.
SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORTATION
Although some of the environmentally conscious in Cambridge are currently focusing their attention on the carbon emissions of buildings, equally pressing in the City Council over the past years and moving forward is the issue of bike infrastructure. The recent expansion of the Hubway program in Cambridge has increased the importance of coming up with a comprehensive vision for biker safety in the city.
Cheung, who spearheaded the effort to bring Hubway to Cambridge, explained that the lack of improvement in bike safety was the result of conflicting ideals among bikers. One camp, the more novice bikers, want separate bike lanes, whereas another camp, the more advanced bikers, are advocating for a transport network that sees bikes as mostly indistinguishable from other traffic vehicles on the roads, Cheung said.
“I think I am more of a novice biker and I think, ‘How can we get those that are not biking to start biking?’” Cheung said. “And that requires separate lines, potentially, separate cycle tracks, which the advanced bicyclists do not like.”
Kelley advocated against bicycle lanes, saying that he believed bicycles belong on the street and should be able to go anywhere they would like to safely.
“I think that bicycle lanes put a cyclist too much in the door zone, and I think they encourage too much biking in that dangerous area,” Kelley said. “I think they are a really bad idea.”
Kelley noted the difficulty of maintaining these separate bike lanes as another argument against the ‘novice biker’ view.
—Antonio Coppola, Nikki D. Erlick, John P. Finnegan, Caroline C. Hunsicker, Jennifer Leung, Laura K. Reston, Sonali S. Salgado, Henry Shah, and Maia R. Silber contributed reporting to this story.
—Staff writer Anja C. Nilsson can be reached at anja.nilsson@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @anja_nilsson.