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Bikepedantic

@pedantic.bike

13K followers 3.5K following 6.3K posts

Darren Buck is a former USDOT FHWA ped/bike research & policy lanyard-collector. Cambridge, MA. Longer-form posting at pedantic.bike

Posts Replies Media

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 3h

Love the info card that devotes three paragraphs to driving directions, and just says ‘call MBTA’ for transit directions

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 5h

most nihilistic staffwork ever

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 6h

If Marc McGovern retires before everything in the CSO is complete, we're sunk. So effective at this.

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 8h

Civic duty and all that, but my jury duty got cancelled and I don’t have to drive to woburn for an 8am arrival woohoo

Reposted by Bikepedantic

lauren @lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com · 16h

you'd like to schedule a doctor's appointment? have you logged into MyHealthChart yet? Remember that MyHealthChart used to be Healbe. If you migrated your chart from Healbe Now or Healbe Epic, you are not eligible to make an account. Please make note Healbe Epic is formerly MyHealthChartRX.

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 11h

‘Friction’ specifically can be right-turning cars queuing, cars parked sticking out into the bus lane, or negotiating passing with cars parking/pulling out. Crossing the street: you’re crossing 1/3 of the street on one leg of your journey, and 2/3rds the other. Versus none and all with curbside.

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 12h

Oh, and Boston? The rest of the region would love it if you stopped getting finite 8-figure Federal grants that could have funded other sustainable transpo priorities in the region, and then repeatedly shitting the bed.

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 13h

2026, man.

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 14h

no valterri bottas appreciation thread is complete without his uber carshare ad www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVhR...

Uber Carshare - Valtteri Bottas' Aussie 'Second' Car

YouTube video by Uber Carshare

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 14h

even leaning into that and saying, "OK we're gonna press pause on everything and do cordon pricing or a giant parking fee on all downtown parking to discourage Milton drivers" is a plan. not a great one, but a plan

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 14h

no gentrification but build a subway line is what's lost me

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 15h

Richard Nixon sidles up next to Pete Rose at a bar in Hell and buys him a beer. "We woulda been winners in 2026, Pete."

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 15h

but i'd never want a leader who ignored the objective data-driven reality of what Blue Hills Ave will do, and who it benefit, just because white bluesky urbanists push it. at some point, leadership that wants to lead marginalized communities begins with some straight talk.

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 15h

but at some point, leaders have to sort through the views and decide. Failing to invest 8-9 figures in a marginalized community - because of the ever-present concern of top-down planning, feelings about stop location, and contradictory stances on gentrification* - is a valid choice.

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 15h

i've stood at the lectern getting chanted at by a Black community over a transportation project. There are always (ALWAYS) failings in master planning and outreach. In an ideal world, public investment in marginalized communities would erase funding source silos and be community-led.

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 16h

It sucks. I get that all the heat and light is on the administration killing the hard sciences, but this also sucks.

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 16h

Because of the Exec Orders banning DEI, this Federally-sponsored research explicitly focused on "transportation-disadvantaged" populations is now promoted as "tailored to the local demographic and socio-economic environment."

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 16h

Anyway, I’m new here. And hope that there’s some unifying principle behind all this that doesn’t suck.

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 16h

Also a lot of talk around about deserving rail. A lot of places deserve rail. Too many. We can’t even afford the north-south connector, something that benefits the whole region. No one is getting rail until we figure out how to cut costs and raise more money,

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 17h

as I understand it, Barr Foundation spent years selling the region on BRT, then throttled back those ambitions, then just sort of exited the space, and now projects are getting shouted dead. What’s happening? www.barrfoundation.org/completed-in...

barrfoundation.org

The BostonBRT Initiative - Barr Foundation

Celebrating impact and reflecting on lessons from a ten-year initiative to improve the bus experience.

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 17h

That’s not the profile of the public opposition in Boston.

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 17h

I guess we now have to amend our thinking about transit lanes to make curb-running the iterative doorzone-bike-lane step forward we must do before trying to sell center-running.

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 17h

These are all things that I could and should try to learn

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 17h

I don’t understand: 1. the seemingly vibes-based opposition to center-running lanes, 2. how curbside lanes are now good enough, 3. what Mayor Wu is about anymore, 4. what Boston’s transpo plan is.

bostonglobe.com

Boston, T scrap plans to extend region’s first-ever center-running bus lane on Columbus Avenue - The Boston Globe

The Wu administration and the T altered the latest design for Columbus Avenue to instead include side-running bus lanes in both directions between Jackson Square and Ruggles.

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 18h

Someone please just copy:paste the krepp quote we all want but are paywalled from seeing

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 05/10/2026

I’m a pretty unremarkable person but delivered an OK eulogy today

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 04/10/2026

It was never in doubt, but Somerville is just more fun.

A bell, welcome mat, flowers, and garland adorn the construction access door at the Somerville end of the work zone entrance for the Community Path rehab

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 03/10/2026

Is my phone such a nerd that it autocorrected FIFY to FIFO

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 03/10/2026

“DOGE mauled the federal workforce, and slashed government efficiency — moves that inspired nationwide protests and lawsuits. The backlash has given Democrats nationally an opportunity to claim the government effectiveness mantle.” FIFO, collaborators.

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 03/10/2026

Beacon St turkey bollards

A bunch of turkeys in a bike lane landscape median

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 03/10/2026

New mural on 2400 Mass (vacant, owned by CHA) looking good. Obligatory two bike mascots.

A partially painted mural on a two story building that says welcome to north cambridge, and shows a bus, two people on bikes, a subway, some people walking

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 03/10/2026

Just say “bike lane closed” when the bike lane is closed.

Cargobike with two kids on back forced into mixed traffic riding next to a sign that says “bike shared lane ahead”

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 03/10/2026

It ain’t a hot take if it doesn’t catch you a screenshot tantrum and a block. Keep it coming, bluesky, I’m here all day.

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 03/10/2026

No no, I’m a “carbrained Canadian”

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Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 03/10/2026

Correct. I’m not going to engage with anyone in real life or online with anyone who crashes into a collegial debate lobbing f-bombs, ymmv

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 03/10/2026

You’re right, I’m wrong to class it as mere aesthetics. And I think 15 mph should be the target/ design speed on the minor street network. But all else equal, the greater systemic risk to peds is with a car doing 25-30 on a major than 15-20 on a minor street

000

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 03/10/2026

If you can’t reply to people debating in good faith without profanity, then go on and git

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 03/10/2026

I’m saying generally if you live on a street where car traffic is restricted for no reason other than to keep non-abutters from driving on it, for no reason other than neighborhoody vibes, why should residents of every other street (including arterials) chip in to keep your asphalt smooth?

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 03/10/2026

Dissuading driving can be done with other carrots and sticks that don’t break the system down for needed trips (bus, freight, etc) If local streets are to be for abutters only, should the broader public be paying for their maintenance? Convert to private ways to mimic the suburban HOA infra model?

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 03/10/2026

Hancock is a neighborway, right? Explains that one anyway

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Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 03/10/2026

I didn’t say cities shouldn’t be allowed to restrict traffic. I’m saying they shouldn’t restrict traffic solely to accommodate the aesthetic preferences of some of its residents.

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Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 03/10/2026

This is unhinged

Map showing bunker hill drive and Medford drive running parallel, and ten small local streets between them all going northbound

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 03/10/2026

Few prewar cities have streets with that hierarchical functional class of streets with enough capacity to keep traffic restricted to the street that serves the purpose of the trip. If you somehow kept all thru-trips off collectors and locals, you’d saturate the arterials, including freight & bus

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 03/10/2026

Just wait til someone gets me on one-way downtown grids

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 03/10/2026

That’s a modern suburb

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 03/10/2026

I hope everyone in DC transpo is nodding their head glumly and muttering something about The Palisades or Bruce Babbitt

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 03/10/2026

Yeah it’s crazy. I’m guessing some people were using it bypass the southbound Fresh Pond queue at Huron

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 03/10/2026

Traffic calming / diversion by policy. Because otherwise, only your richest neighbors get five one-way northbound streets in a row to keep the cars out.

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 03/10/2026

Restricting parking to residents serves an operational function of limiting induced car trips from elsewhere. Doesn’t mean it’s good, but there’s a public purpose for it

Bikepedantic @pedantic.bike · 03/10/2026

I live on a one way “neighborhood” “local” street that gets more than an even share of “cut-through” traffic for many reasons. Added traffic volume isn’t a problem for anything except my preferences. Excess speed is the real problem. Calm all the streets, and don’t reward just the loudest voices