The Hubway bike-share system has come to Jamaica Plain, but the City did not hold any community meetings to determine the location of the stations. Instead, the City used an online forum and outreach to community groups and abutters to elicit feedback.
Hubway is a collaboration between the City and a private company.
Hubway stations have been installed at Monument Square, in front of the post office at the corner of Centre and Myrtle Streets, in Hyde Square at the corner of Centre and Barbara Streets and in Egleston Square at the corner of Columbus Avenue and Washington Street.
The City collected feedback to determine the stations location from an online forum, abutters and through the City’s Office of Neighborhood Services, talking with Main Street organizations and other community groups, according to the Boston Bikes director Nicole Freedman, a JP resident. She called the process “very transparent.”
“The news was out there through a lot of ways and avenues,” said Freedman.
But the lack of community meetings for input into the location of the stations has drawn the ire of some residents.
“How can our City allow this bike depot to be forced on our community without a community meeting?” asked Rodolfo Bonilla about the station being installed at the corner of Center and Barbara Streets. He said parking is already an issue in the area.
[This article has been updated.]
View Comments (5)
The residents clamoring for community meetings are the throngs of old-school types who would prefer face time, or who may not have internet access or the savvy to use it (and I can't help but notice the abundance of Anglo names in the community feedback forum). Further, as a JP resident (Egleston side) I was never informed of any such feedback opportunity and was very surprised by the installation of the Hubway stations. I spoke with the fellas at Ace Hardware earlier this week and they were not impressed with the Hubway outside the post office, and it seemed like they didn't know about the information effort either.
Reaching people who aren't Internet savvy seems to be an ongoing challenge. I do believe the city is trying to get as much community input as possible, but they really haven't figured out how to reach everyone who may be interested in providing input in a timely cost-effective way. What can be done other than flyering entire neighborhoods door to door? If the City were to do that for every project, though, that would be incredibly expensive, and I'm sure other people would complain that it's a waste of resources.
Rodolfo, here is how it works. More bikes means less cars means more available parking spaces. If you love tons of parking spaces may I suggest Des Moines Iowa?
There was a very transparent public process as to where these stations should go that collected feedback from the public:
http://courbanize.com/Boston/hubway-jprd/
There was community input.
http://courbanize.com/boston/hubway-jprd/