Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. has bought up seventeen acres along Binney Street in East Cambridge. They want to build about a million and a half square feet of office and lab space to lease to the biotech industry. Not happy with the limitations under current zoning, they have submitted an amendment to the zoning ordinance to the city that they would like to have passed.

This cheeky act did not come by itself, but was accompanied with the offer to the city and neighborhood of 1.75 acres for a park. It has since been expanded to just over two acres, making it the entire block surrounded by Bent, Third, Rogers, and Second streets. This was a pretty savvy tactic on their part. It got the neighborhood’s attention - without having their zoning petition rejected outright. They sent a delegation to the East Cambridge Planning Team last summer and asked if it was worth discussing the issue. The conversation is heating up. read more...

Finding a parking space for your bike at Alewife T was getting to be almost as hard as finding a parking space for your car in Kenmore Square during a RedSox game.

But not any more, thanks to Daniel Grabauskas, General Manager of the MBTA, who officially opened two new bike cages this morning.

The additional 300 bike spaces more than doubles the number of legal bike spaces, and will alleviate the overcrowding at Alewife, where bikes have been locked to anything and everything that can't be moved. read more...

The following video is an excerpt from this morning's press conference with MBTA General Manager Dan Grabauskas and Cambridge Mayor Denise Simmons at the Alewife T Station.

Here's a bit from the MBTA's press release:

"MBTA General Manager Daniel A. Grabauskas, joined by Mayor of Cambridge Denise Simmons and various bike advocacy groups gathered at Alewife Station on the Red Line to unveil the T’s first ever unstaffed bike cages. Accessible with a swipe of a Bike CharlieCard, two cages constructed to accommodate 150 bicycles each, will provide customers with a safe, secure, and sheltered location to park their bikes. These cages will more than double bike parking capacity at Alewife station to approximately 500 spaces." read more...

Hello again. We must work with our city officials on the traffic issues in 02141. There does seem to be a disconnect, and I think we may need new ideas to get community development and the planning team on board with our concerns. For now I have some new video footage. I should have named the following posts 20 minutes on Gore Street, because you miss the first five minutes of my being stuck behind this truck. All of this video is from twenty consecutive minutes on the afternoon of July 25th, 2008. The video footage here is typical of what happens on Gore Street. I am sorry for the often shaky video. I was returning from work and only had my cellphone. Their is also a missing audio issue. The audio was cut by bliptv (where the video files are hosted), after they convert the file to flash. Maybe I will host them on youtube in the future.

I missed the first few minutes of this truck being stuck at the next intersection (Fifth and Sciarappa). I was talking to the mailman who was telling me about his own observations at these intersections. At one point duing this video shooting, I did see a Cambridge Cop drive by on a bike. It would be nice if these truck drivers would receive a violation. I always pay my parking tickets if I violate the time restriction outside a store. It would be nice if these well paid corporations would at least get their tickets. read more...

In this video I was walking back to get video of a food delivery truck I had noticed while shooting video number two. While I went to take this shot, more trucks blazed through. Please take note of the speeding flatbed truck which is driving by a public park full of children. I was too late in capturing this flatbed truck as it ignored the stop signs at the intersection of Fifth and Gore. This is no surpise as they ignore the no truck signs to begin with. So back to the food delivery truck. We only get to see the last seconds of this truck which had been idling at least ten minutes. That was how long ago I noticed it when shooting video 2. This is the typical scenario of truck drivers pulling onto residential Fifth Street (no truck signs posted), they leave their trucks running as they take care of business on Cambridge Street. They don't even bother to stay close to the curb. read more...

This video explores the safety issues of the Minuteman bike path, a historic rail trail running through Cambridge from Somerville to Concord.

This program was produced as a part of CCTV's 20 Hour Production Marathon, one of the many events to celebrate CCTV's 20th anniversary.