Have you ever looked at your bike and said, “Man, I really wish there was a bike washing station nearby.”
If you have, Boston is apparently the city for you.
In Boston, Democrats’ obsession with nonsensical policies, such as adding bike lanes, is reaching new, never-before-seen levels of idiocy. The city has already displayed a supreme lack of creativity by moving to copy New York‘s tax on drivers entering the city. They removed lanes for cars to install bike lanes, creating logjam traffic, killing small businesses, removing parking, and slashing car traffic in key sectors. The bike lanes were bad enough, but don’t worry, Democrats have found a way to make it all better!
Boston was founded nearly 400 years ago, almost 300 years before the invention of the automobile. Space is limited, as it is in many prerevolution cities, because it is constrained by the city planning of generations before. Now, it’s become clear that some of the most powerful leaders in the city, as is the case in many other Democrat-led cities, have forgotten that we live in the 21st century. Cars take up space, and when the response to that is removing lanes for traffic, chaos ensues.
This isn’t just a first-world problem, either. Traffic congestion could mean the difference between life and death for someone undergoing a medical emergency being transported by first responders to the hospital. It could mean the difference between someone from Cambridge or Dorchester making a trip to the North End for their favorite restaurant, which in isolation might not be a big deal, but in aggregate could mean the closure of businesses that have been around for decades.
Living in a city has become one of the most expensive things young people can do in this country. Specifically, in Boston, rent is more than twice the national average, and it is only going up. Add to that the additional cost of parking for many professionals, and it should come as no surprise that young professionals aren’t able to afford homes and are stuck in a cycle that adds to an already growing housing crisis.
Speaking of the housing crisis and our illustrious bike lanes, who is to say that the washing stations installed in our bike lanes won’t be used as cleaning stations for a rapidly growing homeless population? From 2023 to 2024, the city saw a 10.6% increase in people experiencing homelessness and a jaw-dropping 74% increase in family homelessness. That, added to an influx of migrant populations during the Biden administration, has created a situation that is untenable in the long term for Boston and Massachusetts writ large.
If voters in American cities want to see real change, they must change the people we elect to run things. Many mayoral elections might be nonpartisan, but the policies speak for themselves. Decades of Democrats being in control have sent this city, and so many others, spiraling to prioritize ridiculous, showy policies such as bike lanes and bike washing stations over reducing housing costs, solving the homelessness crisis, and fixing traffic problems city residents have been dealing with for a generation.
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You might ask, “How could you blame this on Democrats?” The answer is simple: The last Republican mayor of Boston was born in 1876 and served as mayor in the 1920s. I would venture a guess that in many American cities, despite a Rudy Giuliani or two, you will see the same pattern. After decades of Democrats being in control of our cities, I think it’s safe to lay blame on the party in control.
Bike lanes are just a microcosm of the larger issues plaguing the Democratic Party. Democrats have decided that they would rather enact performative policies than take on hard decisions and make real change.
Jenn Nassour is the finance chairwoman of the Massachusetts GOP.