For our first walk audit in a bit more than a year, we’ll team up with WalkBoston to take stock of existing conditions and think about street safety improvements on Poplar Street, all the way from Roslindale Square to the intersection with Hautevale Street. Everyone is welcome to come, learn about street safety, and help us think about ways to make our neighborhood a safer, more welcoming place for everyone who wants to use this critical neighborhood street.
Here’s the route we’re planning on auditing:
The walk will start with an intro presentation at WorkHub at the Substation (corner of Cummins & Washington) at 9 am. Please check out and sign up at our facebook event page so we can try to do at least a little of numbers planning. More to come soon. Thanks!
Greetings,
I heard a verbal report from Eileen Brennan about your Poplar Street audit at the West Village Neighborhood Association meeting. I believe that your formal report is not yet available. However, several suggestions for change were made for the area around Gourmet Coffee and the blocks up to Sycamore Street. Could you please share what your working suggestions are for this area?
Thanks,
Laurie
Laurie: Thanks for checking in and your interest in the walk audit’s results and recommendations. As you correctly noted, we’re still in process on the walk audit report and compiling feedback and recommendations from participants. If possible, we’ll share preliminary suggestions once we’re further along. All the best, Matt
Thanks Matt. My review of another audit report suggested a more rigorous analytic process is necessary. Let’s do this conversation on the “Keep Roslindale Quirky” website. That way all of your audit walkers can consider the feedback.
Laurie – These days, I generally try to stay away from facebook for anything other than event organizing and as a channel through which to circulate information, so I’ll have to decline your invitation for us to communicate about this walk audit report over KRQ. As for the report itself and your evaluation of prior walk audit efforts, I would only note here that walk audit reports are focused on assessing the safety of vulnerable street users and encouraging the city to think about commonly-employed street interventions to improve their safety. Walk audit reports aren’t intended to supplant the process the city goes through when actually planning, designing, and implementing such interventions. Thanks. – Matt
Matt-
Thanks for your response.
I have been truly impressed by the passion that WUR members have for their goals. I am equally impressed by knowledge and education. This gives me confidence that this feedback will be seriously considered. Similarly, I hope that this feedback will be helpful.
Information is simply data — such as presence of broken sidewalks. “Assessing” means gathering information and interpreting it. In the Cummins walk audit, you include recommendations based upon assessments.
There is is bias in the Cummins audit. One example is bias in the interpretation of some of the qualitative data — what analysts would call confirmation bias. Removing bias is important when setting policy or encouraging the COB to take specific actions.
Thanks for allowing this conversation to continue.
Laurie – Appreciate your passion around these issues as well, but it seems that there is some misunderstanding over the approach WUR has taken to our walk audits since we first started doing them in 2015 and our expectations in how they should be viewed and used. While we often refer to objective background information as context (as, for example, with regard to the impact of increased vehicle speeds on survival rates for pedestrians in vehicle-pedestrian crashes, especially the precipitous drop in survival rates between 20 mph and 40 mph), WUR’s walk audit reports expressly advocate for our collective vision around a safer, more walkable neighborhood. They don’t purport to be strictly neutral or free of our viewpoint about what would make Roslindale’s streets safer and more balanced among users. This is hardly news to anyone who has followed us or taken part in prior walk audits. Ultimately, it’s the city’s role to decide how to respond to our advocacy consistent with both the city’s Vision Zero policy and GoBoston 2030, so we don’t self-edit or attempt to adopt viewpoints that we don’t hold. I hope this helps clarify things. – Matt
Thanks for this explanation, Matt.
Our Roslindale Coalition’s Mission Statement includes: “Our processes include working with respectful neighbors who collaborate and compromise so goals are met. Our processes recognize that people of good will
• may have different goals
• may have the same goals, but different priorities
• may have the same priorities, but different solutions”
Collaborate and compromise are key words. You, I and all WURers are co-members of our Roslindale community. We examine, as do you, benefits to all the community. We have an important mission of inclusiveness — listening to and advocating for those most affected.
I think I’m good to close this now.
Thanks for the opportunity to contribute to the conversation.
Laurie
Good morning: The public review draft of the walk audit report has just been posted. Thanks!