Getting There Getting Nowhere

WOULD YOU READ a thick, red volume somnolently entitled Long Range Planning: Inventory, Policies and Recommendations? Apparently, neither would many University administrators.

Compiled in 1975 by the Harvard Planning Office (HPO), the volume recommends several projects, including a network of bicycle paths around and through the campus. No portion of the network has ever been built, and students and Faculty members are now asking why.

Spurring the issue is a decision by University Police to begin enforcement this semester of an age-old ban on bicycle riding in the Yard. The purpose of the ban, police say, is not to hamper bicyclists, but to protect pedestrians. Bicyclists counter that the money spent on posting policemen at the entrances to the Yard would better have been used to begin the network of bicycle paths that no one seems to have taken seriously five years ago. Their protests should cause the Committee on Houses and Undergraduate Life (CHUL) and senior administrators to reconsider seriously the HPO's 1975 proposal.

"A designated bike path would protect pedestrians without cutting off the flow of bicycles," John E. Dowling, professor of Biology, says, adding, "The University took a negative step in prohibiting bicycles from the Yard, when it could have taken a positive step in creating separate paths for bicyclists and pedestrians."

John W. and Hanna M. Hastings, masters of North House, say they have been "waging a private campaign" for two years to obtain a bicycle path from the Quad to the Yard, thus far with no success. "I don't know why nothing has been done, and I was very surprised to learn they've closed the Yard to bicyclists without providing a reasonable alternative route," John Hastings says.

Supratik Bose, the University's manager of long range planning and principal author of the 1975 bicycle study, says there are two obstacles to building a network of bicycle paths: the paths would have to cross both public and private property, and Cambridge's streets are too narrow to accommodate separate bicycle lanes. He adds that the planning office has not estimated the cost of such a project, but "it could be very high."

Fortunately, none of the obstacles that Bose mentions may be insurmountable. Substantial portions of the bike routes mapped out in the 1975 proposal are on Harvard's property. Moreover, the current construction in the Square affords an opportunity to widen or redesign several major streets to include bicycle lanes. And if the University is willing to hire several full-time policemen to keep bicyclists from entering the Yard, it ought to be willing to make a substantial investment in bicycle paths.

THE POLITICAL atmosphere for cooperation between Harvard and the city of Cambridge on the issue of bicycle safety clearly exists. Cambridge traffic planners told The Crimson this week that they would be willing to work with Harvard's planners, who responded in kind. The Boston-Area Bicycle Coalition, the strongest bicycle lobby in Massachusetts history, has pledged to push for the creation of bicycle paths throughout the metropolitan area. And the state legislature, impressed by the arguments of the coalition and other pro-bicycle groups, has included funds for a state bicycle coordinator in next year's budget.

The real question is not whether a network of bicycle paths across campus is physically or politically possible, but whether it can get past the planning stage in a compartmentalized university. Harvard Police, who are responsible for insuring the safety of pedestrians in the Yard, have little contact with the planning office, which in turn has trouble selling its ideas to administrators. Harvard often tells itself what to do, but doesn't listen.