WORCESTER, MA — Just last week, five out of Worcester’s 11 city councilors voted in favor of removing the city’s newest — and most protective — bike lane along Mill Street.
An institutional resistance to building bike infrastructure might be one reason why Worcester is again at the bottom of the most definitive list of bicycling safety in cities around the globe, but efforts are underway to make major improvements.
People for Bikes last week released its 2024 city rankings, and Worcester came in No. 85 out of 92 cities in Massachusetts. New England’s second-largest city has a smaller biking network than behemoths like Townsend, Boxford and Sturbridge, according to the ranking. Worcester’s overall score was a 7 compared to No. 1-ranked Provincetown at 96.
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Worcester got doored in wider rankings, coming in at No. 179 in all of New England, No. 2,155 in the United States and 2,427 internationally — about 150 spots from dead last, held by Gulfport, Fla.
The People for Bikes rankings measures the expansiveness of local bike networks. For example, Worcester scored an 11 out of 100 for “access to jobs and schools” by bike. Worcester has some bike lanes, but they are spread out across the city with few connections between them.
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The new Mill Street bike lane — the parking-protected lane councilors nearly erased last week — travels from near Coes Pond beach to Chandler Street. But if you want to travel from Coes Pond closer to Webster Square, or into Tatnuck Square on the north end, you’ll have to share the road with pickup trucks, Amazon delivery vans and everything else.
The new bike lanes along Main Street downtown only travel between Highland and Madison streets, with limited connections to bike lanes in the Canal District. Bike access to Worcester’s only multi-use trail along the Blackstone River is limited to sharrows, a type of travel lane that bicyclists have to share with drivers.
You can see a map of Worcester showing how stressful the roads are to use as a cyclist. Compare that to Worcester’s peer city, Fayetteville, Ark.
Worcester’s ranking, however, has improved. The city’s score hit a low of 6 (out of 100) in 2021 before rising slightly in 2022, falling in 2023, and improving again in 2024. That might have something to do with Worcester’s new Department of Transportation and Mobility (DTM).
Starting in 2022, DTM took over designing roads in Worcester alongside the annual repaving program. Following the redesign of Mill Street, DTM has redesigned Burncoat Street, Grove Street along Indian Lake and Stafford Street to include long stretches of bike lanes where once there was only room for cars. Expect those projects to be complete this summer. DTM is also working on a redesign of Chandler Street between Main Street and Park Avenue, a $10.6 million project set to begin in 2026 that will include enhancements for bikes and other forms of transportation, like scooters.
People for Bikes has a list of actions cities can take to improve bike networks, including adding protected bike lanes, reducing the size of intersections and lower speed limits — another effort underway in Worcester right now.
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