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 Committee member seriously hurt, police promised yesterday to step up enforcement of existing laws and a company vowed to refuse packages delivered by the couriers.
Margot Hill, a police spokeswoman, said a task force is reviewing a 1990 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 more bite than the present ordinance,'' Hill said.
The task force includes a representative from Boston Police Commissioner Paul F. Evans' staff, another police officer, a representative of the business community, and a representative from the city's Licensing Division.
The group's task grew in importance two weeks ago when School Committee member William Spring was struck by a courier on a bicycle as he crossed a street. Spring, who lapsed into a coma after the Oct. 30 collision with Jonathan Gladstone on Commonwealth Avenue, remained in the intensive care unit at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center yesterday.
Hill said the task force hopes to draw in the business community and the firms that employ couriers to draft new regulations in an industry that she said has become unwieldy.
Possible changes in the law would include higher fines for couriers and sanctions for the firms that employ them.
She said several city councilors have said they support making the ordinance more stringent.
''People complain all the time,'' she said. ''We're hoping people continue to complain so we're even more aware of the problems couriers cause.''
Hill said the ordinance that governs couriers was passed when the industry was beginning to make inroads in Boston, and that there were between 100 and 150 couriers operating on city streets at the time.
She said the figure now is well over 600 couriers in a city whose automobile traffic has become heavier in the same period.
George Regan of Regan Communications, meanwhile, said he is not waiting for the city to take action. Yesterday, he announced a new policy of refusing to accept packages delivered by couriers.
''I don't think many of these guys have ever heard about traffic rules and regulations as a group,'' Regan said. ''They could use a Miss Manners course.''
Regan said he is sending a letter to the 200 clients and vendors he does business with, notifying them that he will not accept such packages until the couriers submit to strict guidelines and the rules are aggressively enforced.
''If our vendors don't like it, then they can send their packages somewhere else,'' Regan said.
Hill said other firms have expressed interest in either refusing to accept packages delivered by couriers or in boycotting firms that use bicycle couriers.
John Hamill, president of Fleet Bank, has said he considers couriers a hazard to pedestrians and that he will join with business leaders to mull strategies to deal with excesses ranging from rudeness and violation of traffic laws to outright physical aggression by some couriers.
Speeding and lack of regard for signs and courtesy on the road are among the chief complaints. Many of the couriers are paid by the number of packages they deliver, so they have an incentive to get to and from their destinations quickly.
''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 somebody to 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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