After an incredibly full summer of park activities and our first Fall Festival, we turn again to management and policy issues that impact the park and all of you who walk, ride bikes, take the T and drive to and in the park. 

In a few weeks, the draft recommendations for transportation improvements will be presented at a community meeting at the Golf Clubhouse (Thursday, October 16th 6:00 pm) - please come and share your reactions, input, and opinions. We have a real opportunity to work for changes that will benefit all of us. 

Take a few minutes to read about transportation problems in the park - you'll see comments on earlier entries of this blog, can download the slide presentation of data and documented issues, and read a letter from the FPC board president offering input on the Franklin Park transportation study nearing completion.

After the Boston Bike Festival held in early September in Franklin Park, at which community members could "rent" a bike for free to ride that day, I feel more committed than ever to making the park a bicycle friendly place. More than 100 people of all ages rode along the paths and roads in the park that day. Eva from Dorchester said, "I haven't been on a bike for 40 years! I can't believe I remember how to ride. I'm going out tomorrow to buy myself a bicycle, I want to do this every weekend."

Please give your input! Come to the meeting on October 16th, send an email to mail@franklinparkcoalition.org, or post a comment on this blog. What transportation problems impact and bug you the most? Speeding along the main park road? Having to wait for the #16 bus into the park? Not being able to maneuver your wheelchair through the granite blocks at park and path entrances? Trying to cross Circuit Drive on foot? No bike racks? or something else? Make sure your opinions and transportation needs are heard!

Tonight at 7:30 pm I was at the corner of Elm Hill Ave and Seaver Street adjacent to the park when EIGHT speeding motor bikes came roaring out of the park. A few were the low-riders we have seen for years, but two were a new style - one with tall wheels making the rider sit up higher than on a bicycle, another new type had four wheels like a dune buggy.

In past years I have been at the Playstead ballfields and watched the motor bikes zooming through the outfield of a little league game, roaring past elderly walkers with canes, or cutting off a small child on a tricycle. They're incredibly noisy, dangerous, and probably a lot of fun to ride. 

Boston Police and Park Rangers claim they can't chase them. Some park walkers who talk to riders say the police tell them to go to the park to get off city streets. No one seems to know (police and riders) that motorized vehicles are never allowed off-road (on paved or dirt paths) in Franklin Park.  

For a few weeks this spring the park seemed quieter. The Mounted Police had patrols out several nights a week. It seemed like a deterrent. The Rangers are trying to patrol more often, but I don't see them out in the evenings when the motor bikes are at their worst.

What have you noticed? What do you think about the motor bikes?
    -We have to get them out of the park!  OR
    -Kids need a place to ride and have fun? 

Do you bicycle in Franklin Park? Are you a walker who is worried about being hit by a bicycler? Would you bicycle in the park if you felt safer?

As part of the transportation and park access study we have been asked to consider bicycle use - what deters it? Is it a problem? What can be done to promote and support bicycles? Where can children learn to ride a bike in the park? Do we need designated bike lanes on walking paths and roads?

My own pet peeve is having to carry my bicycle over the low stone walls and granite blocks at entrances when I bike through the park from the Stadium entrance to American Legion Highway (my route to work). I wish the entrances and granite blocks running along the roadways had wider spaces for a bicycle with side baskets to pass through.

I also think we need more bike racks. The only ones are at the Golf Clubhouse (and they're just a year old). I park my bike at the Playstead, at the Zoo, and at the Shattuck picnic area and usually lock it to a sign post, others use the trees for lack of anywhere better. Where would you like to see a bike rack? 

Weigh in if you are a park bicyclist or a wannabee bicyclist! We may convene a small working group to look at bike access in the park. Want to be part of the discussion? Post on the blog and send an email to: mail@franklinparkcoalition.org
 

There have been recent complaints about speeding park maintenance vehicles - driving along the road in front of the Shattuck Hospital, by the picnic area and tennis courts. Cars and trucks are going to and from the maintenance yard that serves all the parks in the city, The "yard" is the starting and ending point for maintenance workers and their vehicles every day. Has this been a problem you've witnessed? Is it a safety hazard for pedestrians on the Loop Path? Let us know, share what you've seen.

After more than five years of clearing invasives - Japanese knotweed, glossy buckthorn, and others - with close to 1,000 volunteers each year, we've learned that there are some intractable plants that require more than we can do manually. To save this forest and prevent it becoming a wasteland of knotweed with no native plants or animals surviving, we will resort to limited use of a low-toxicity herbicide.

The plan is to inject Japanese knotweed with glyphosate, the active ingredient in Round Up; paint stumps of the few glossy buckthorn and Asian bittersweet plants that cannot be pulled by the roots; and spray leaves of poison ivy that pose a health hazard because of their proximity to walking paths. The bulk of invasive removal will continue to be done by hand with volunteers and young people. Cutting knotweed to prevent its spread, pulling buckthorn and bittersweet by the roots with weed wrenches, snipping catbrier, and weeding garlic mustard will all continue with the generous assistance of volunteers.

Signs, some type of lightweight fencing or means to rope off an area, and publicity on this website will alert park users to herbicide use. Notification will go out a few days in advance and areas will be roped off for a week to ten days following herbicide treatments. Special precautions will be taken to limit spread of herbicide in the broader enviroment. To learn more, you can go to the Woodlands Restoration page and read specifics.

People who came out to last Saturday's (March 8th) meeting, including many FPC volunteers, listened carefully to the the proposal to save the Franklin Park woodlands - Boston's oldest and perhaps largest forest. As one said afterwards, "if you think of it in terms of a cost-benefit analysis, it makes total sense. We're impacting our woodland environment with a small amount of herbicide in order to save the entire woodland. One chipmunk may become ill, but if we don't act, the park will turn into a knotweed desert and not a single native creature will find it habitable."

Do you have questions? concerns? add to this blog!

A team from the B.U. School of Environmental Health will be helping evaluate and test conditions before and after herbicide use. They can answer public health concerns, understand the impact, and are following the emerging science around invasives control.