cycling

Last week, Westwood resident Virginia Lester met with students at Westwood High School to tell the story of her son Albert's tragic death by teenage drunk drivers. Westwood Community Access Television (WestCAT) and the High School worked together to record the presentation which will eventually be telecast on cable TV when WestCAT has obtained control of local origination programming. For now, check out the video, embedded here from the WestCAT website:

To watch the video above, you may need to click the play arrow, then pause it, then play again to get it started.

This Friday is the first Bike Friday of the year. Convoys of police-led bike commuters will leave from various points around the Boston Metro area and converge on Government Center around 8:15am to grab a free cup of coffee and some bagels, meet other bike commuters, then get to work by 9.

Last year, I rode over to Buckmaster Pond where Fox25 was doing their ZipTrip to Westwood, but no one joined me until I met up with a couple of guys from Dedham on my way to the official start of the convery at the Roche Bros in West Roxbury.

Anyone want to ride this year? The convoy leaves West Roxbury at 7, so I plan to leave here at around 6:30 and will take Washington Street through Dedham, up Court St to Ames, then right on Bridge Street into West Roxbury. Join me at the corner of Gay and Washington, in front of Hogan Tire, at 6:30am. I'll stop in front of the Dedham UU First Church around 6:40. If I don't show within 5 minutes, don't wait for me...but hopefully, we can put together a little mini-convoy

Bike Fridays are also Walk/Ride Days, a region-wide celebration of green transportation on the last Friday of every month! So, wear something green for the ride that day, check in at the Green Streets booth, and be rewarded by retailers across the region. http://www.gogreenstreets.org/

Friday was a great day to bike commute. Leaving home a litter later than usual, I found the traffic was not bad. I took along a camera and shot the following photos, (making me even later for work).To see my route, follow this link to a map.

Tip: for anyone who is working on Monday, Columbus Day, I know the traffic is almost nonexistant--another great day to ride a bike in to Boston.

This weekend, I noticed again how much foot traffic passes in front of my house on Gay Street. Nearly every time I looked out the window, I saw people walking up the hill toward the Hanlon School, pushing strollers, riding bikes with their kids and kids riding bikes with their friends. As I went for a run, I ran into more people. It all all reinforces my impression that we already live in a fairly walkable town and, given some basic improvements in safety and convenience, we could encourage more walking and all the advantages that come from that:

• it promotes good health by giving residents the opportunity for simple exercise,
• it reduces traffic and saves gas by making it possible to avoid car trips for short errands,
• it increases public safety by putting more "eyes on the street," and
• it increases the opportunities for building community as we see our neighbors and have more opportunities for informal conversations.

Walkable communities are more liveable communities and lead to whole, happy, healthy lives for the people who live in them. In the rest of this article, I will describe my personal vision for a Walkable Westwood (please comment!) and link to a number of resources--local, regional, and national that I think can help us kick off a project to make walkability one of the things people cite as a reason they love to live here.