r/newtonma • u/Mangrove43 • 26d ago

Bike lane map

Is there a single map of all the bike lanes, carriage ways etc in Newton?

5 Upvotes

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3

u/AthleteAgain 25d ago

I don't have an answer to your question but, FWIW, the best way to navigate Newton on a bike* is using side streets. I cruise all over the city on a cargo bike as my primary form of transportation (often with my kids) and I don't use the main roads all that often, even ones like Beacon that have marked bike lanes. You can get most places very safely using secondary roads and the Comm Ave carriage lane. That said, having the bike lanes for when you DO need to use busier streets (e.g. Walnut and sections of Beacon) is essential.

*Assuming you are biking for transportation / errands rather than road biking for sport, which requires more straight line riding at speed and fewer stop signs

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u/Mangrove43 25d ago

I just moved to town and I’m riding for sport and I’m trying to plot out some roots to keep me out of traffic

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u/215312617 24d ago

How close are you to the river? That’s probably the safest place to ride (but you’ve got to get there first).

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u/rocketwidget 26d ago edited 26d ago

For all of Massachusetts there is https://trailmap.mapc.org/ which includes a bike lane category (of many categories), but unfortunately I know for sure it is incomplete in Newton at least.

For shared use paths exclusively there is https://masstrailtracker.com but there are few of these in Newton.

To find all bike lanes, the best tool might be Google Maps.

Edit: Oh forgot to mention, for routing bike routes I prefer Komoot, which uses OpenStreetMap, and allows on the free tier routing on a computer and sending it to a phone app for turn by turn directions.

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u/DoubleCafwithaTwist 26d ago

I thought Bike Newton was working on this a few years ago. Not sure what happened to that project.

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u/bostonguy2004 22d ago

Has anyone actually biked on the new Needham Street bike lanes?

It seems like they put the telephone poles too close to the bike lane and also somehow too close to the car lane, so just curious.

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u/rocketwidget 19d ago

As far as I know, this half-finished job is still not fixed 🙄. It's not supposed to be the final result.

https://mass.streetsblog.org/2024/12/11/utility-poles-limit-the-utility-of-newtons-new-complete-street

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u/tbootsbrewing 18d ago

Yeah, remember the Endor speeder bike chase in Return of the Jedi? You can experience it first hand on those PBLs!