Snow-Covered Bike Lanes in Cambridge, MA: Who’s Liable When the City Doesn’t Plow

Cambridge has spent years building out a network of protected bike lanes, but a foot of snow does not care about paint and flex posts. When a storm hits, the vehicle travel lanes usually get cleared first, and cyclists are left choosing between a lane still buried in snow and ice or merging into traffic with cars. Television coverage of a January 2024 storm captured exactly that scene on Massachusetts Avenue, with riders picking through ice in the bike lane or giving up and taking the road instead. The problem has not gone away since. Cambridge Public Works was still deploying loaders, a bobcat and dedicated bike lane equipment during a storm as recently as March of this year. If you were hurt after being forced out of a snow covered bike lane, the legal picture is more complicated than it looks, and the city is often not where the strongest claim lies.

Why Bike Lanes Are Often the Last Areas Cleared

Cambridge’s Department of Public Works says it treats bike lanes the same as streets, but the equipment and layout make that harder than it sounds. Crews use a specialized machine called a Multihog to clear separated bike lanes, and that equipment needs roughly seven feet of clearance to operate while working around the flex posts that separate many lanes from traffic. The city’s brine pretreatment program, which sprays a salt solution ahead of a storm to keep snow from bonding to the pavement, currently reaches only select bike lanes and sidewalks rather than the full network. The result, visible after almost every significant storm, is that some protected lanes stay covered well after the parallel travel lane is clear, and cyclists are left deciding between an unsafe lane and the road. Not every obstructed lane is caused by weather either. Illegally parked cars force cyclists into traffic just as often, and that is its own kind of claim with its own rules.

Cambridge’s Own Rule Against Plowing Snow Into a Bike Lane

Part of the problem is not the storm itself but what happens afterward. Cambridge’s snow and ice ordinance is direct on this point: shoveling or plowing snow into the street or into a bike lane is against the rules. Property owners clearing a sidewalk, contractors clearing a parking lot, and anyone else moving snow off private property are not supposed to push it into the lane cyclists use. When that rule gets broken and a rider is hurt swerving around a fresh pile of shoveled snow, the party responsible is often not the city at all. It is the property owner or snow removal contractor who created the obstruction, and a claim against them does not run into the notice deadlines or damage caps that apply to a claim against a municipality.

Can You Sue the City for Not Plowing?

Suing Cambridge directly over a snow covered bike lane is a harder path. Massachusetts law gives cities and towns broad immunity for injuries caused by snow or ice on a public way, as long as the location was otherwise reasonably safe and convenient for travel apart from the snow itself. Getting around that immunity generally means pointing to something more than an ordinary accumulation, some kind of defect in the way separate from the snow. A pothole hidden underneath might qualify. Snow that simply was not cleared, on its own, usually does not. Any claim that does move forward against the city also has to meet the same thirty day written notice deadline that applies to pothole and road defect claims, sent to the mayor, city clerk or treasurer rather than filed as a maintenance request through Commonwealth Connect or SeeClickFix. Miss that window and the claim is typically over before it starts.

Forced into traffic by a snow covered bike lane and hit by a car in Cambridge? Get a free case review from a Cambridge injury attorney. Call 617-683-1983.

The Claim That’s Usually Stronger: The Driver Who Hit You

Snow on the bike lane does not erase a driver’s duty to watch for cyclists who have been pushed into the travel lane, and that is usually where the more solid claim lives. If a car strikes a cyclist who merged out of a blocked or unplowed bike lane, ordinary negligence rules apply to the driver regardless of the road conditions. Massachusetts personal injury protection coverage still pays up to eight thousand dollars in medical bills and seventy five percent of lost wages no matter who was at fault, and the state’s minimum bodily injury coverage, raised to twenty five thousand dollars per person and fifty thousand dollars per accident as of July 2025, still applies as well. A driver or an insurer may argue the cyclist should not have been in the travel lane at all, but Massachusetts comparative negligence law only bars recovery once the injured person is found more than half at fault, and a cyclist who was pushed out of a lane the city’s own rules say should never have been blocked has a genuine answer to that argument.

What to Do If You’re Hurt

A few steps protect both your health and any claim that follows.

• Photograph the bike lane, the snow or ice, and whatever forced you into traffic as soon as you safely can. This kind of evidence melts within days.
• Report the hazard through Cambridge’s dedicated online category for an icy or snow covered bike lane. It creates a timestamped record, though it is not a substitute for formal legal notice to the city.
• Get medical attention. Injuries from a fall or a low speed collision do not always feel serious right away.
• If a vehicle was involved, get a police report and the driver’s insurance information.
• Know the deadlines that apply. Thirty days for written notice to the city, three years for a general negligence claim under Massachusetts law.

If you were hurt because a Cambridge bike lane was buried in snow or ice, or because someone illegally shoveled it full, a Cambridge bicycle accident lawyer can help sort out who is actually responsible before a deadline passes. Melanson Law Group offers a free consultation. Call 617-683-1983.