This Friday from 7 to 9 a.m., the City of Boston will host its annual Bike to Work Festival on City Hall Plaza. A Boston’s Bike to Work Day billboard in Downtown Crossing, featuring StreetsblogMASS editor Christian MilNeil (second from right, in the blue helmet). As part of the celebration, the city has also coordinated 16 convoys of nearly 700 bike commuters who will make their way into downtown Boston from 24 surrounding cities and towns. To meet up with a convoy coming through your neighborhood, visit the city’s Bike to Work Day website. The festival at City Hall Plaza will feature exhibito ..read more

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, the lead sponsor of the region’s Bluebikes system, will offer free $5 credits for bike rides each Sunday this month to celebrate Bike Month. The credits can be redeemed in the Bluebikes app for trips on any of the system’s bikes, including the new e-bikes (where additional per-minute fees apply), across the entire region. Use the code BLUECROSSHEALTH2 in the Bluebikes app on Sunday, May 19 to redeem this week’s credit. The post Bluebikes Sponsors to Offer $5 Ride Credits This Sunday for Bike Month appeared first on Streetsblog Massachusetts ..read more

The Somerville Bike Kitchen will host its annual Bike Pageant this weekend, on Sunday, May 19th, in the courtyard of Aeronaut Brewing at 14 Tyler Street. Courtesy of the Somerville Bike Kitchen Organizers describe the pageant, which as “a celebration of unique, fun, creative, colorful and/or otherwise one-of-a-kind bikes.” The festivities will start around 1 p.m. with day-of registrations. Voting will run from 2 to 3 p.m., followed by prizes and a “ceremonial procession” of winners. The pageant is free to attend, but if you think your ride is a contender, participants are encouraged to pr ..read more

Last week, Boston transportation planners hosted a virtual meeting to discuss their plans to add more bike lanes and bus lanes to various streets in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood, which is currently a significant bottleneck for frequent-service MBTA bus routes and a major gap in the city’s growing network of protected bike lanes. The City of Boston will reconfigure three Back Bay streets this year – Boylston, Berkeley, and Clarendon – to add new bus and bike lanes. At the same time, city officials are finalizing proposed designs aimed at calming traffic and improving connectivity in the bike ..read more

Boston’s first open streets festival of 2024 is happening this weekend on Dorchester Avenue, between Linden Street and Ashmont Street from 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. A lineup of several hundred vendors, performers, and community organizations have signed up to enjoy the 1.4-mile stretch of Dorchester Avenue while it’s closed to car traffic. It’s the first major open streets event of an expanded season. This year’s events are also being extended later into the afternoon compared to last year’s events, which ended by 3:30. The post Open Streets Season Starts This Sunday In Dorchester appeared ..read more

ValleyBike, the regional bikesharing system that spans from the UMass Amherst campus to the City of Springfield, will reopen for business under a new operator before the end of May, according to officials from the City of Northampton. ValleyBike has been out of service for over a year after the private firm that handled day-to-day operations went out of business. In the year since then, ValleyBike’s municipal owners, led by planning staff at the City of Northampton, have been scrambling to find a replacement while the ValleyBike fleet sat unused in a city warehouse. After issuing a request for ..read more

May is Bay State Bike Month, and Boston-area bike advocates gathered at Aeronaut Brewing in Somerville for a Bike Month Kick-off Event last Sunday afternoon.  Bay State Bike Month is a celebration in the cycling community across Massachusetts, where communities and organizations collaborate to bring bike joy to cyclists of all ages and experience levels. The month includes dozens of events like group rides, happy hours, trivia nights, bike repair pop-ups, and educational workshops. The event on Sunday, hosted by MassBike, Somerville Bike Safety, Cambridge Bike Safety and the Somerville B ..read more

Since 2013, the state’s leading transportation agencies have been planning a massive reconfiguration of Interstate 90, Soldiers Field Road and the Framingham/Worcester railroad line along the Charles River waterfront in Allston. If and when the project is finished – potentially sometime in the early to mid-2030s – Allston will have new and upgraded bike and pedestrian connections to the Charles River, a new waterfront park, a new grid of local streets to set the stage for a huge new urban neighborhood, and a major new commuter rail station that could be directly connected to Kendall Square via ..read more

This article has been adapted from a City of Boston and Bluebikes press release. The City of Boston and Bluebikes sponsor Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts will offer free bikeshare rides during planned subway service disruptions like this week’s Blue Line closure. For people who aren’t already members of the Bluebikes system, Bluebikes will offer five free checkouts per user during each planned shutdown period. People can access the five free rides by downloading the Bluebikes phone app and using the code MBTABLUEAPRIL through April 20th. During the subsequent Red Line closure, which wi ..read more

After nearly two years of planning, the Commonwealth is gearing up to spend $4.5 million to help low- and moderate-income households purchase new pedal-assist electric bikes. In a “request for proposals” (RFP) document released on Thursday, the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center announced their intention to “provide targeted incentives to residents across Massachusetts to purchase an e-bike” starting this summer. “This program aims to support e-bike adoption among (low- to moderate-income) households while supporting the Commonwealth’s environmental goals,” according to the RFP. The Clean Energ ..read more