Lipstick on a pig. It’s what you call it when you do non-substantive things to improve appearance without fixing the underlying thing. Boca Raton has been a “Bronze” level bike friendly city for 20 years. After riding and filming 90% of Boca Raton’s Bike Map, I think these two thoughts are connected.
At the end of this article is a 30 minute presentation made to the Boca Raton Citizen’s Pedestrian and Bike Advisory Board on Sept 8 2025. It shows how the Addison Mizner School “Roll/Stroll to School” infrastructure is performing in the era of e-bikes and e-scooters. Spoiler alert: the design is flawed leaving parents and kids to fend for themselves.
This is because the design seems to assume pedestrians, bikes, e-bikes and e-scooters work like cars. They don’t, they won’t, and they never will. The Addison Mizner School Roll/Stroll to School proves it. No doubt the design looked pretty on a Powerpoint or diagram where the flow is left to creativity of the observer. But that is not how it works in real life. See the prez.
Addison Mizner School Sidewalks: How e-Bikes and e-Scooters broke it
Recently, while driving past the Addison Mizner School during drop off time (7:30 – 7:55), I pulled up behind a Dad:
- On an e-Moto.
- Kid in front.
- In the bike lane.
- Ready to scoot across a very busy four lane Camino Real when the light turned green.
I watched him bolt off the line, cut across 12th Ave, and travel counterflow up the sidewalk. My subsequent visits to experience riding the infrastructure myself was like pulling a string of discovery on how the design fails as it mates to Boca’s “Bronze Bike Friendly” infrastructure.
In my presentation (below), I show examples, analysis and a vision of what is needed to fix the Addison Mizner School infrastructure specifically. It’s also a vision for what the entire “Safe Route To School” on 12th Ave from SW 18th to FAU should be. e-Bikes/Scooters are not the problem. They are the solution. The many e-Mobility devices in use today are taking cars off the road in large amounts. But this increased participation in ped/bike infrastructure users very quickly sheds a light on the failings of “Bronze Bike Friendly” infrastructure. Boca must find a better way to build safe infrastructure than the begging cap-in-hand car centric approach that it’s used the past 20 years.
Additional Information
- e-Bike Crash at Boca Middle
- Black Eye for Boca
- CRASH INVESTIGATION: A Preventable A1A Crash Fatality.
- A Resident’s Analysis of Boca’s Mobility Infrastructure
- ABOUT THE BOCAFIRST DETAILED BIKE MAP: The BocaFirst map uses six types of infrastructure instead of three, shows where the City Map is inaccurate and provides edited videos showing the real world experiences. You can explore it here.
