apology
I'm sorry. In a moment of weakness, I drove to work yesterday, and it was a mistake. Not only for me personally—I had fine reasons, with a touch of sickness and a fairly broken bicycle, but it ended up taking me longer in the car than it would have on the snowy bike path—but for the city as a whole. There are too many cars everywhere, and I felt terrible for adding one more to the mess! The Greater Boston area just isn't built for this much snow.
At least, it isn't built for this much snow together with this many cars. As I sat on Mass Ave, stationary for minutes at a time, and watched the cyclists braver and wiser than I roll easily past through the slop, I wondered how much better the traffic situation would be if even, oh, ten percent of the folks in cars could be on bikes instead? Or what about a quarter? How many commuters could possibly bike instead of drive? Lots, I bet... if the infrastructure were better.
Because part of the problem is that, with the tremendous effort towns are putting into clearing the roads for cars, bike paths and sidewalks are being neglected. Sure, most of the main bikeways are now cleared shortly after each storm—for which I'm ever so grateful!—but they only get one pass for every ten or twenty on the roads, which means that they often end up with a messy inch or two of snow. They're not impassible by any means, but it does slow you down a lot. That's another reason why I wimped out yesterday.
I shouldn't have. As it turns out, side streets in Cambridge are even worse, covered with several inches of soft dirty snow still and hemmed in by cars embedded in snow banks. Those cars were probably parked there after the first storm or two, so they were already squeezing in on the road; now completely buried they turn what used to be two-way streets into narrow canyons that I felt nervous about being able to fit through. And that's just Cambridge... what must Boston be like?!
So yeah, I'm sorry I drove. I won't do it again. And if you need to get around this winter, try cycling! Even if you're not a very quick rider you'll get to enjoy the very pleasant experience of passing lots of cars... and of knowing you're no longer part of the problem, but part of the solution!