Doug Mink, a member of the statewide advocacy group MassBike, says that the Department of Conservation and Recreation, which is responsible for many of Boston's bike paths, has made some progress in the past year by repairing heavily eroded sections of the path that winds through Stony Brook Reservation in Hyde Park, and has patched holes on the Cambridge side of the Charles River Trail between River Street and Harvard Square.

DCR spokeswoman Vanessa Gulati says the department also plans eventually to restripe the Mass. Ave. bridge, though an exact date needs to be worked out with MassHighway, and it is working to develop a design plan for the Charles River Bike Path that would extend it through the ''lost half-mile," a stretch of riverfront between the Museum of Science and Charlestown that is inaccessible to bikers and pedestrians. Gulati says a start date for this project can't be set until a design has been selected.

The DCR announced plans in March to extend a trail along the Neponset River in Mattapan, Hyde Park, and Milton. Gulati said work will begin after the design is completed.

DCR Commissioner Stephen Burrington says the agency is committed to repairing existing trails and to making the process for developing new paths more open and less complicated.

''People who are interested in Boston's bike paths currently have no road map," he says. ''They deserve one."

Several other bike-friendly projects have been proposed or are in development. MassHighway is expected to award $3.9 million this year or next to complete one portion of the South Bay Harbor Trail, which will, according to the South Bay Harbor Trail Coalition, connect Lower Roxbury to Fan Pier via Melnea Cass Boulevard, the Central Artery, and Fort Point Channel Corridor.

Late last month, a consortium of advocacy groups led by the LivableStreets Alliance presented MassHighway, the City of Boston, and Boston University with a design plan for the reconstruction of Commonwealth Avenue between the BU Bridge and Kenmore Square.

According to Jeff Rosenblum, executive director of LivableStreets, the plan slows traffic and improves safety for pedestrians and T riders, and includes dedicated bike lanes.

But there have also been setbacks. In what Rosenblum calls ''a major lost opportunity," it was announced last year that a parcel of MBTA-owned land in West Roxbury that advocates were hoping would become home to a pedestrian and bicycle path will instead be sold to abutters. According to Rosenblum, current design plans for the new Rose Kennedy Greenway, above the Big Dig, do not include a bike path, and a proposed project to link Ruggles Street and the Emerald Necklace via Northeastern University and Forsythe Avenue is stalled.

Mink of MassBike, who regularly bikes many of Boston's trails, is concerned about tree roots breaking through pavement and causing buckling on parts of the Southwest Corridor Park bike path, which follows the MBTA Orange Line from Jamaica Plain into Back Bay, and on the Cambridge side of the Charles River Path, particularly between the Agassiz and Eliot bridges. He's also seen deterioration on parts of the Muddy River path in Brookline, and describes sections of the Melnea Cass trail as a ''total mess." Most baffling to him is a 100-foot gap in the Harbor Path trail that runs past the Kennedy Library, near Columbia Point. ''It's a huge hole in one of Boston's most scenic paths," he says.

But Mink contends that for all the shortfalls in its path network, Boston's abundance of parks is an advantage for bikers.

''The city's bike paths follow a network of green space and rivers that actually go to useful places," he says. ''If your destination happens to be on one of these paths, you're in luck."