JP Bikes

Department of Conservation and Recreation
Commonwealth of Massachusetts
and the Emerald Necklace Conservancy

Wednesday, July 1, 2009
6:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Arnold Arboretum Visitors Center/Hunnewell Building
125 Arborway, Boston

At the meeting, design alternatives for safer pedestrian crossings to Jamaica Pond will be presented, and public input sought, for the following three locations:

• Jamaicaway at Eliot Street
• Parkman Drive at Kelley Circle
• Parkman Drive at the Parkman Memorial

If you have questions about the public meeting, please email DCR.Updates@state.ma.us or call 617-626-4974.

Summer biking to Cape Ann Sunday June 28th! It’s supposed to warm up this weekend finally! Take your bike on the MBTA’s Bike Train. The bike train has a special car with bike racks replacing the passenger seats along one side of the car. Two ride options are available:

One group will take the 10:15 AM bike train from North Station to Rockport. Meet at Ferris Wheels at 9:00 am or meet at North Station in time for the train. This group will then ride the coastal route from Rockport to Manchester, where we will go to Singing Beach to eat and swim (if you can brave the cold water!). The bike trip is about 18 miles.

The other group will not take the train to Rockport but instead ride all the way to Manchester (about 30 miles). This group should still meet at Ferris Wheels at 9. You might be interested in this route if you’ve always wanted to know how to ride northeast from Boston through Chelsea, Everett, and Revere.

Both groups can hang out at the beach, or consider more riding. And then, both groups will take the train back to Boston. The 2:21 train is not supposed to be a bike train, but bikes are allowed and there is often plenty of room. The 5:31 train from Manchester is a bike train.

At the moment the weather is calling for scattered thunderstorms. We will only call the ride off if it is raining in the morning and/or if there is a good chance of prolonged rain during our ride. It’s the summer, and it will be hard to avoid this kind of weather. You can call Bob at 617-947-2721 on Sunday morning to see if we’re going.

Please RSVP to Matthew at mdemarrais@yahoo.com and let him know which ride you would like to do.

The T-shirts that we sold at the Spring Roll are available for sale at Ferris Wheels for $10. They come in the green color shown, as well as a natural color.

Our first event - the “Spring Roll!” bike parade and celebration - was a great success this morning. We estimate 140 riders came to the South Street Mall and rode the festive loop. Some pictures are up on the “Spring Roll!” page in this blog (linked above). More pictures will be posted soon. If you took any pictures, let me know and I’ll put them up too.

Special thanks to:

The District E-13 “Safe Street Team” of the Boston Police Dept
City Feed, Fiore’s, and the Harvest Coop
Ferris Wheels and Bikes not Bombs
The city’s Bike Boston initiative

Stay tuned for our next event next month:

Summer biking in Rockport! Sunday June 28th, take your bike on the MBTA’s Bike Train. See Halibut Point and enjoy the ocean. Ride will leave from Jamaica Plain or meet us at North Station. Train departs at 10:15 AM.

On May 10th we roll! Get the word out!

The first annual JP Bikes “Spring Roll” is on May 10th, so get the word out! It’s a bike ride/parade and mini festival right in the heart of JP at the South Street Mall (South and Carolina). We’ve got our permits and are ramping up promotion. Stay tuned for a meeting announcement for April 30th and look for our flyer (copied below) to be posted all over JP storefronts soon. We need everyone to talk it up in advance and volunteer, so please join our group if you haven’t already.

Click on this link or on the “Spring Roll” tab above for a map and other details.

First . . .

We’ve got a general meeting tomorrow, Tuesday 3/10/09 from 7-8 pm at the Agassiz School, 20 Child St., JP, MA 02130. Come join us and get involved with any one of our great committees - media (website and outreach), education, advocacy, rides and events, and more!

Specifically we’re looking for volunteers to help add a forum to our website, so y’all can start talking directly to each other, planning your own rides, and whatever else your cycling heart desires. We’re also in need of volunteers to help take our Spring Ride to the next level. It’s currently on for May 10th, with the blessing of the City of Boston’s bike coordinator, Nicole Freedman. We need youth coordinators, bike decorating volunteers, and loads more people to make this a success, so please come to the meeting and sign up to help out!

Next . . .

Come join JP Bikes and a plethora of other local JP businesses and non-profits at the Milky Way this Wednesday, 3/1//09 from 7 - 9 pm for the Neighbors for Neighbors info night!

You can speak to one of our members one-on-one about everything JP bikes has to offer, plus find out more information about our upcoming all-ages Spring Ride on May 10th. Also, join us on the NFN site and check out all the other great local groups online while you’re there!

Hope you’re weathering the storm today and we’ll see you at the meeting and the Milky Way!

JP itself boasts great places to bike, such as the Southwest Corridor path, the Jamaicaway path, the Arboretum, and Franklin Park. However, it can be quite daunting trying to bike from JP to elsewhere within and near Boston. Our intention for creating the map was to show places to ride within Jamaica Plain and offer suggested routes for getting from JP to various places of interest. The map, which is available as a tab on the top of each page, is intended to be a “living” document, and your input is not only welcome but necessary. I don’t claim to know the best route from JP to South Station, since I still get lost or get caught on one way roads!

Our education committee will brainstorm to come up with the most common destinations and agree on one or more routes to get there by bike. In the near future, our intent is to implement a “forum” on the maps page which will provide a convenient mechanism for site visitors to comment on map routes, suggest new ones, or request that we provide a suggested route to a destination of the visitor’s choice. For now, you can add comments to this blog post to do any of these things.

The map itself is available from a tab at the top of this page, and can is also at this link.

So! I think you’ll find the site now much easier to both look at and navigate. Here’s a quick run-down on our features:

“About” will ostensibly explain soon exactly what it is JP Bikes has set out to do. In a nutshell, we want to give bikers in Jamaica Plain a place to come for rides, education, and, most importantly, community. Through that community we can foster not only more and better events, but also city-wide bike advocacy.

“Committees” - This page includes a list of the sub-groups we’ve formed to help members (like yourself!) get involved in activities, should you care to do a little beyond enjoying the ride.

“JP Bike Map” - here’s a map that a kind member started for us where we will be posting the best routes in and out of JP. We may add more and more specialized maps as necessary. If you’ve got an idea for a route, just let us know!

“Gallery” - Here’s where we’ll post photos of events just as soon as we have them. If you’ve got photos of past biking events in JP, please let us know and we’ll add them to the gallery!

On the right hand side bar you’ll also notice some amazingly useful widgets, such as:

Upcoming Events - this is a Google Calendar feed of all our upcoming events. Just click the links and Google Calendar opens right up for you to view our month-at-a-glance. If you have an event you’d like to add the JP Bikes Google Calendar, you can either let us know in the comments, or sign up for a free Google Calendar account (http://www.google.com/calendar) and add the event directly to the calendar yourself! The JP Bikes calendar is open to public editing.

JP Bikes on Twitter - If you have a Twitter account, any time you add “#jpbikes” (without the quotes) to one of your Twitter posts, it will show up in our sidebar! Now you can let everyone know, say, the status of the Southwest Corridor this morning, or if you’re leaving on an impromptu ride on a Friday afternoon. Very useful for up to the minute biking news!

You’ll also see a forum added soon. We’ll either be linking it here via another site with forum software, or adding a page (ideally) for you to tab to. The purpose of the forum will be to help build the JP Bikes community by getting everyone to talk to each other and plan rides, meetings, and just commiserate about life in general.

If you’ve got any other suggestions for improvements to the site, or you’d like to help out with some of these media projects and maintenance, please let us know in the comments and we’ll definitely get back to you!

Right now the next general meeting is scheduled for Feb 25th, but that will probably be pushed back, so stay tuned for a status update.

In case you didn’t notice.  We’ll be overhauling the JP Bikes epicenter over the next few weeks so it’s bright, shiny, and useful.  Keep checking back for Twitter updates (side bar) on biking conditions around Boston, and ride, meeting, and event updates as they come in.

- Jen