After accident, firm balks at deliveries
By Zachary R. Dowdy, Globe Staff, 11/12/97
Two weeks after an accident with a bicycle courier left a School Committeemember seriously hurt, police promised yesterday to step up enforcementof existing laws and a company vowed to refuse packages delivered by thecouriers.
Margot Hill, a police spokeswoman, said a task force is reviewing a1990 ordinance that requires bike couriers to be licensed, to wear helmets,and to follow traffic laws.
''We want to put a stronger law in effect, one that has a little morebite than the present ordinance,'' Hill said.
The task force includes a representative from Boston Police CommissionerPaul F. Evans' staff, another police officer, a representative of the businesscommunity, and a representative from the city's Licensing Division.
The group's task grew in importance two weeks ago when School Committeemember William Spring was struck by a courier on a bicycle as he crosseda street. Spring, who lapsed into a coma after the Oct. 30 collision withJonathan Gladstone on Commonwealth Avenue, remained in the intensive careunit at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center yesterday.
Hill said the task force hopes to draw in the business community andthe firms that employ couriers to draft new regulations in an industrythat she said has become unwieldy.
Possible changes in the law would include higher fines for couriersand sanctions for the firms that employ them.
She said several city councilors have said they support making the ordinancemore stringent.
''People complain all the time,'' she said. ''We're hoping people continueto complain so we're even more aware of the problems couriers cause.''
Hill said the ordinance that governs couriers was passed when the industrywas beginning to make inroads in Boston, and that there were between 100and 150 couriers operating on city streets at the time.
She said the figure now is well over 600 couriers in a city whose automobiletraffic has become heavier in the same period.
George Regan of Regan Communications, meanwhile, said he is not waitingfor the city to take action. Yesterday, he announced a new policy of refusingto accept packages delivered by couriers.
''I don't think many of these guys have ever heard about traffic rulesand regulations as a group,'' Regan said. ''They could use a Miss Mannerscourse.''
Regan said he is sending a letter to the 200 clients and vendors hedoes business with, notifying them that he will not accept such packagesuntil the couriers submit to strict guidelines and the rules are aggressivelyenforced.
''If our vendors don't like it, then they can send their packages somewhereelse,'' Regan said.
Hill said other firms have expressed interest in either refusing toaccept packages delivered by couriers or in boycotting firms that use bicyclecouriers.
John Hamill, president of Fleet Bank, has said he considers couriersa hazard to pedestrians and that he will join with business leaders tomull strategies to deal with excesses ranging from rudeness and violationof traffic laws to outright physical aggression by some couriers.
Speeding and lack of regard for signs and courtesy on the road are amongthe chief complaints. Many of the couriers are paid by the number of packagesthey deliver, so they have an incentive to get to and from their destinationsquickly.
''I've never been hit, but I've been a victim of their crude remarks,''he said. ''It's just sad that it's taken a tragic event like this for somebodyto do something.''
This story ran on page B02 of the Boston Globe on 11/12/97.c Copyright 1997 Globe Newspaper Company.
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