Menino, Heaven on Wheels

The lamest and most specious cliché about humans has to be that they don't change. Our mayor is most recent, most excellent proof to the contrary.

His personal road to Damascus seems to have benn more localized — on Hyde Park Avenue in old Beantown. As detailed in today's Globe, he is no longer a vélocipèdiphobic (surely not a real word; substitute old guy who hates bicycles, cycling and cyclists).

I shall happily continue to eat as much crow as he can feed me on this issue. I certainly ragged on him enough during his anti-cycling years.

Now, I hope that he shows at Moving Together 2007. I have attended these annual ped/bike/car conferences for years, and until this year, some sessions and comments had always been about what a bad cycling city Boston is and how the government seemed bike hostile. Let the praise begin with me.

He has announced the city will shut up people like me by providing virtually everything we've been screaming and whining for all these years. Specifically:

• New bike racks everywhere, starting with 250.
• Rehiring a bicycle overlord (the new czar, as they like to call it, is to be Olympic and pro cyclist Nicole Freedman, who has been working on the Hub on Wheels event).
• Online bike-route maps.
• Bike lanes on currently dangerous-to-bikes avenues, including Mass Ave and Commonwealth.
  

Deliciously, Da Mare has changed his bike bent, but not his competitiveness. It appears that he wants Boston to outdo cities like Cambridge and New York. Get 'em, Tommy!

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Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, Boston, cycling