Category: Safety

Centre and Walter Intersection

DCR Community Meeting on Walter and Centre Street Redesign – November 10, 2015 at St. Nectarios Church Hall

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Centre and Walter Intersection
Intersection of Centre and Walter Streets
The Department of Conservation and Recreation (“DCR”) recently held a series of public meetings to solicit input about the parkways of the Parkway Area–particularly the Centre Street Corridor, which accommodates 40,000 cars every day. The corridor is poorly designed for drivers, pedestrians, and bicyclists alike, and it’s time to fix it.

Although Centre Street brings thousands of cars daily right through Roslindale, no meeting has focused on or been held in Roslindale — until now. Thanks especially to the efforts of neighbor Carter Wilkie, our representatives in the state legislature have arranged for a fourth public meeting, focused especially on the intersection of Centre and Walter Streets, which has had the majority of crashes in recent years — 46 crashes over a three year period! Traffic engineers have determined this intersection violates state safety standards, but funding for improvements will be hard to secure unless people speak up. Previous meetings about this corridor have demonstrated a lack of care for and attention to pedestrians and bicyclists–it’s important that the planned improvements serve everyone, not just those who might be passing through in a motorized vehicle.

We understand (at least) Sen. Rush, Rep. Sánchez, and Rep. Coppinger will all be present at the meeting, so this is an excellent opportunity to be heard on the importance of pedestrian- and bike-friendly infrastructure in one of the worst-designed parts of our neighborhood. We’ll add to this post if we receive confirmation about attendance from any other elected officials. We should turn out in force and advocate for walkability!

Please spread the word (retweet or like/share this announcement on Facebook). Details below:

Tuesday November 10, 2015 6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
St. Nectarios Church Hall
39 Belgrade Ave. (and Robert Street)
Roslindale

More background:

Sad Crosswalks

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We envision a sea change for pedestrian safety in and around Roslindale: traffic calming, narrower automobile travel lanes, woonerfs, pedestrianized-street parties, reliable enforcement of speed limits, curb extensions, chokers, road diets, pedestrian zones, chicanes–they should all be in the mix and implemented where appropriate. We should be leading, not trailing, in rolling out these best practices, because we are ideally situated to be the most walkable neighborhood in Boston. We share the dream of Vision Zero and need to hold the City’s feet to the fire to make it real.

None of these changes are likely to come quickly, though. In our neighborhood, the streets surrounding Adams Park are especially bad but also have fantastic potential. While we’re putting in the long-term work to achieve Vision Zero, we should, in the meantime, at least get some crosswalks that are not an embarrassment to the community. Check out these two recent photos from the already problematically-wide intersection at Poplar, Washington, and Corinth. Roslindale deserves better.

Poplar Crosswalk at Washington Street
Poplar Crosswalk at Washington Street
Washington Street Crosswalk to Public Library
Washington Street Crosswalk to Public Library

 

City hires new Active Transportation Director!

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This is big news if you’re in favor of walkability throughout our city.

Stefanie Seskin has just been named as our new active transportation director.

You can read the City’s announcement here, and BostInno’s short take here (it’s the second item). The prior administration’s kind-of analog position was the bike czar, which Nicole Freedman held for 7 years. Nicole did a great job, but much more can and now will be done to expand on the concept of “transportation” beyond specific modes (walk, bike, transit, car) and their designated advocates. Two quotes lifted from the press release:

First, from the Mayor:

“Boston is an active city and we are continuing to invest in our pedestrian and bike infrastructure, encouraging residents to think creatively about how they get from point A to point B. Stefanie brings leadership and talent to this new position, and I thank her for her willingness to serve.”

And from the new Director:

“I am excited to take on this new position as Active Transportation Director for the Boston Transportation Department, and I am grateful to Mayor Walsh and Commissioner Fiandaca to be given this opportunity,” said Seskin. “I love seeing so many people who already walk and bike around the city, and I look forward to working with residents to make Boston even more walk- and bike-friendly.”

So, we have a brand new official ally at the city. No excuses now for not speaking up and letting our local government know what we want to see. What can WUPR suggest to our new active transportation on ways to make Roslindale more walkable?

Wondering about Conway at South: Would on-street parking on both sides help slow down speeding cars?

Matt Lawlor 4 Comments

The photos below are looking up Conway Street from its intersection with South Street directly adjacent to the commuter rail stop. Recently, I’ve noticed that signs have gone up seeking to encourage drivers to slow down, and even more recently a crosswalk has been painted after the street was repaved. Both interventions are visible in the photos, which I took this evening on the way home. My own personal observation is that these are well-intentioned steps taken by the city and/or residents on the street to deal with a real problem — drivers at this intersection tend, far too often, to ignore the stop sign at Conway/South coming down the hill, and they drive too fast. Apropos of the title to this post, I also wonder why there’s on-street parking only on one side of Conway at this location. The paved street width here is about 26′, about the same width as Fairview Street (one block over, about 25′ in width) and, to the naked eye, most other streets on Peters Hill. I would posit that one reason there’s excessive speeding on this street is that there’s parking only on one side of the street (as opposed to Fairview and most every other street I can think of in the immediate vicinity), leaving a too-wide driving area that signals to those behind the wheel that the way has been cleared for them to comfortably exceed the default speed limit of 30 mph. I would further posit that allowing for on-street parking on both sides of the street would signal to drivers that they must proceed on this street with caution and at a rate of speed at or below that posted speed limit. With only a single lane in each direction, cars going in opposite directions on the street have to yield to each other in order to safely pass, and they must therefore drive more slowly. This is a condition that generally works quite well throughout Peters Hill and elsewhere in the city. Comments welcome, especially from Conway residents following WalkUP who may have insight on why Conway is set up this way today.

Pic 1 Pic 2

Adams Boy Killed by a Car

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Just days after the death of an eight year old girl in Mattapan, an eight year old boy was killed by a car, crossing the street in Adams, Massachusetts. It’s time for us to say enough. No loss of life is acceptable.

East Road in Adams Ma
East Road in Adams MA (Image Courtesy Google Maps)

Based on the Google Maps imagery of the area of the death, there are no crosswalks, stop signs, or stop lights as far as the eye can see in either direction, nor is there even a sidewalk on both sides of the street.

Members of the mother’s high school class have set up a fund to help with expenses.

Another Pedestrian Tragedy in the City of Boston

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Local news reports on a terrible tragedy this past weekend in Mattapan, where an eight-year-old girl was killed and a twelve-year-old boy seriously injured by a hit-and-run motorist who was later arrested and charged with vehicular homicide and leaving the scene of a motor vehicle accident. Recall we had a similarly serious incident in Rozzie just a couple of weeks back (that driver has since been identified and charged). We don’t know the families or more details than have been made publicly available, but it’s an awful occurrence. We offer our condolences to the one family and wishes for a speedy recovery to the other.

One point in the article bears emphasis here:

Neighbors said speeding is a constant problem on West Selden Street.

“Literally I’ve been in my house and cars have gone by so fast that my house shakes,” said Dee Phillips, who lives on the street.

It’s easy and natural to blame bad drivers — and some in the comments on the above-linked article callously assert irresponsible parenting — but fundamentally these tragedies are a statistically predictable result of the decisions we collectively make about our urban environment, starting with street design, but also including enforcement as well as culture and community norms. Put simply: speed kills.

My first post-college job back in the 1990s was at the Center for Neighborhood Technology, a think-tank in Chicago that researches and advocates for smarter transportation and land-use policies, as well as environmentally sustainable economic development. We were trained not to call car crashes “accidents” in public statements; rather they should just be called “crashes.” The reason: although any particular crash might seem accidental in its details, in the aggregate the phenomenon is the predictable and foreseeable result of policies involving our streets. And while any single crash may or may not have been avoided through better design decisions, there are well-known proven techniques that will greatly reduce the number of such crashes. All it takes is a determination that we won’t tolerate a certain baseline level of death and serious injury as the “cost of doing business.” This is exactly the point of the Vision Zero Initiative: No Loss of Life is Acceptable. We embrace this vision, and you should too.

Near Fatal Hit-and-Run Near Rozzie

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Universal Hub reports on a potentially deadly hit-and-run against a pedestrian on Washington Street not far from Rozzie Square late Thursday night. While it’s important that BPD bring the perpetrator to justice, we should also take this opportunity to fix the pedestrian environment. Washington Street brings a large volume of pass-through traffic through the village, and features large stretches of road without crosswalks; crosswalks with poor visibility; gridlocked traffic at busy times; and dangerously high-speed traffic (including drag racing) at others. There’s a lot more to say on this topic, but for now let’s just start a conversation about a new vision for the area stretching from Turtle Pond all the way up to the Forest Hills, while we also hope the victim makes a full recovery.

(Update 6/9/15: the driver has since been identified based on a tip and summonsed for arraignment, specifically Eddie Cartagena, 25, of Boston.)