Please Fill Out a Gateway Path Survey
Update 4/16/16: the survey is now over; keep an eye on http://walkuproslindale.org/gateway for news.
In advance of the upcoming visioning session for the Arboretum Gateway Path, we and our partners in the Tufts Urban Environmental Policy Planning program are conducting a survey to better understand the needs of the community. Please complete the survey and spread the word to your neighbors!
Also hot off the presses, check out these posters for the upcoming event:
Report of another neighbor on foot struck by a car in Roslindale
This time at Belgrade Avenue and Walworth Street (near Fallon Field), this morning around 7 am. Only report so far is on Keep Roslindale Quirky’s Facebook page (reproduced below for those without access). The report indicates that an ambulance was on the scene. More needs to be done to put an end to this wave of car on walker crashes. The city’s Vision Zero ramp up this spring can’t come soon enough.
We don’t yet know exactly which corner the crash occurred or any other circumstances, although one after-the-fact eye witness reports it may have been near the auto body shop on the back right corner in the image below. Here’s the general area, which, unlike several other recent pedestrian crashes, at least has crosswalks and signals albeit poorly designed (and hence dangerous) due to the odd angles of the crossings:
Roslindale Village Walkable Film Series – The Friends of Eddie Coyle – Thursday, March 17, 2016 @ 6:30pm
We’re now ready for the next installment in The Roslindale Village (Walkable) Film Series. Next up is The Friends of Eddie Coyle, a classic Boston gangster film starring Robert Mitchum and based on a novel by George V. Higgins. The movie was shot throughout the Boston area, including in Dedham, Cambridge, Milton, Quincy, Sharon, Somerville, Malden, and Weymouth.
Check out the poster, original art again courtesy of Andy Cross.
The free screening will be at a private residence (details provided upon RSVP) on Thursday, March 17, at 6:30pm. Runtime is about an hour forty minutes.
This is a very small screening facility; if all spaces fill up, check back for any cancellations. Questions or comments to film@nullwalkuproslindale.org.
Arboretum Gateway Path Visioning Session March 30, 2016 at 6:30pm
Momentum is growing for the Arboretum Gateway Path, which would create a new entrance to the Arboretum near the Roslindale Square Commuter Rail station, creating access to the park right from the business district (and avoiding the steep incline for the existing entrances), and also providing a shorter “straight shot” multi-use path from Roslindale Square to Forest Hills. To learn more and contribute your own ideas, please join us for a community visioning workshop organized by our community partners at Tufts University, 6:30pm, Wednesday, March 30th at the Roslindale Community Center (6 Cummins Highway). RSVP and more details here.
Update 3/7/16 – hot off the presses, check out these posters for this event:
Traffic Calming on American Legion Highway in the News
Kudos to the Mount Hope Mount Canterbury Neighborhood Association, Rick Yoder, Lisa Beatman, and the Roslindale Bulletin (especially Jeff Sullivan) for keeping the need for traffic calming in Eastern Roslindale, particularly along American Legion Highway, on the front burner. Check out the latest piece in the Bulletin, emphasizing the neighborhood group’s efforts to catalog pedestrian-safety issues and get “on the map” for Vision Zero.
Roslindale Village Walkable Film Series – Holding Ground – Thursday, March 3, 2016 @ 6:30pm
The Roslindale Village (Walkable) Film Series has received an immediate enthusiastic response from the community and we are especially excited to kick it off with Holding Ground, the Rebirth of Dudley Street, a film by Leah Mahan and Mark Lipman. Check out this fantastic poster for the event, original art courtesy of Andy Cross.
Note (updated 2/25/16): we are unfortunately out of space for this event! You can still RSVP and if we get any cancellations, we will contact you by email to let you know about the additional availability. Looks like there is plenty of demand for a community film screening space in Roslindale village!
The free screening will be at a private residence (details provided on RSVP) on Thursday, March 3, at 6:30pm. Runtime is about an hour. Holding Ground is a cautionary tale of urban policies gone wrong in Roxbury, 1985 and a message of hope for all American cities.
There are only a handful of spaces left at this screening facility. Once we have completely run out of space, we’ll close down the RSVP page, but in the meantime get in your last RSVPs now!
Dante Ramos just nailed it in last Friday’s Globe
We’ve all been following the tragic spike in deaths resulting from car-on-human-being-walking crashes in our city, including our neighborhood, to start this year. As Dante Ramos asserted in an opinion piece in last Friday’s Globe (“If jaywalking is wrong, I don’t want to be right“), the answer to the carnage is not, as one of our state legislators has reportedly proposed, to jack up jaywalking fines. Instead, we need to reorder a badly disordered transportation system and reclaim the right of human beings on foot to safely use and inhabit our streets, intersections, and squares throughout Boston and here in Roslindale. It’s worth quoting from Dante’s piece at length as he talks about how Vision Zero will work here:
Ironically, [Sen.] Chandler’s legislation comes up at the State House just as Boston is embracing Vision Zero — a strategy for eliminating all motor vehicle deaths and serious injuries by 2030.
Heightened law enforcement may be part of the strategy, at least at certain key intersections. But according to Chris Osgood, Boston’s chief of streets, the city will rely more on education and on a deeper analysis of street-level conditions: the physical design of intersections, the timing of traffic and walk signals, the movement patterns of people and vehicles not just at individual intersections but throughout the surrounding blocks.
Of course, the gradual fine-tuning of a city’s overall transportation system may not seem emotionally satisfying to a driver who’s been delayed by a jaywalker. And when you’ve grown up in a world where transportation laws primarily serve cars’ needs, it’s easy to persuade yourself that stiffer jaywalking fines — what Chandler calls “the stick approach” — are for pedestrians’ own good.
Never mind that pedestrian fatality rates are lower in places where jaywalking enforcement is lax than in Los Angeles, where it’s been far more aggressive. Motorists don’t need greater protection from the supposed threat of wayward pedestrians, and, anyway, not every annoyance in life can or should be fixed through tougher laws and stiffer tickets.
Mother and Baby Struck by Car in Roxbury
WalkBoston recently sounded the alarm that serious (and fatal) pedestrian incidents are fast becoming a near-weekly occurrence in Boston. The latest such event occurred last night in Roxbury, where a mother and her baby were struck by a car at the intersection of Humboldt Ave and Humboldt Court. Our local CBS affiliate reports on two sisters coming to a quick rescue and performing CPR on the 5-month-old victim. We have scant information on details of the crash and the fate of the pedestrians remains unknown. We can only hope they both survive and make a full recovery. Update 6pm: we were devastated to learn via the Boston Globe that the baby has died.
That said, we would urge the media not just to cover the “human-interest” aspect of these tragic incidents, but also highlight potential root causes so that we don’t have to keep re-living the same sad story. Poor infrastructure and bad design decisions in particular are recurring themes–for far too long, Boston’s professional traffic engineers have prioritized fast and unimpeded traffic flow over other needs, including the very real risks to human lives of car-centric streets. Again, we don’t know the details of this incident, but a quick look at the intersection where the crash occurred shows (1) a long stretch of street with no crosswalks [despite a bus stop across the street]; (2) extremely wide travel lanes; (3) in a densely-settled area, a certain recipe for predictable harm to pedestrians. Once ago, it’s time to move into action on Vision Zero.
Further update: The Boston Globe article also suggests speed was a factor, again this is not surprising given the wide lanes:
Residents on Friday said the car that allegedly hit the woman and her child was speeding: one woman who declined to give her name said she heard it whipping down the street before she heard the crash.
Announcing the Roslindale Village Walkable Film Series
We are excited to announce a new WalkUP Rozzie initiative: the Roslindale Village (Walkable) Film Series! Because we fervently believe everyone should be able to experience great movies in a community setting accessible by foot or bicycle. Sadly, the historic Rialto Theatre disappeared decades ago, leaving only the adjacent Rialto Barbership behind, but we are committed to revival. We’ve got six films lined up to start, to be projected for free screenings in a variety of private and public locations. Ultimately, we aim to identify a permanent comfortable space for high quality community film watching and discussion, but there’s no time like the present to get the ball (or film) rolling. We’ll always have the latest updates at http://walkuproslindale.org/film.
Our private-residence film screening locations have limited seating, so we ask that you RSVP in advance to get the street address. We’ll update the posting for each event if it fills up. RSVPs for the public locations are also appreciated.
Without further ado, here is the initial lineup — click on the entry for more details and to RSVP (links will be updated over time):
- Thursday, March 3 @ 6:30PM – Holding Ground — Private Home on South Street
A cautionary tale of urban policies gone wrong in Roxbury, 1985 and a message of hope for all American cities. (Film Website / IMDB)
- Thursday, March 17 @ 6:30PM – The Friends of Eddie Coyle – Private Home on Taft Hill Terrace
After his last crime has him looking at a long prison sentence for repeat offenses, a low level Boston gangster decides to snitch on his friends to avoid jail time.
- Thursday, March 31 @ 5:30PM – Making a Killing – Roslindale Branch of Boston Public Library
The personal and political stories of how guns – and the billions of dollars made off of them – affect the lives of everyday Americans.
- Thursday, April 14 @ 6:30PM – Burning Greed – Roslindale House Auditorium, 120 Poplar Street
A locally-made documentary following arson-for-profit conspiracies in 1970’s Boston – a forgotten, true story of heroism, activism, and corruption.
- Thursday, April 28 @ 5:30PM – The Thread – Roslindale Branch of Boston Public Library
- Saturday, May 7 @ 2PM – This Changes Everything – Roslindale Community Center (Sponsored by Greening Rozzie)
An epic attempt to re-imagine the vast challenge of climate change and capitalism.
A film by Greg Barker that documents the role of social media in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.
Sponsor and Partners: Sponsored by WalkUP Roslindale in partnership with GreeningRozzie, RozzieBikes, Roslindale Village Main Street, Friends of the Roslindale Library, Roslindale Pub Night and Longfellow Area Neighborhood Association.