We’re happy to see City Councillors Kendra Lara and Ricardo Arroyo, along with the Boston Transportation Department and neighborhood resident Nathan Eckstrom, are leading a safety walk on January 28th at 1pm, focusing on road safety issues along Hyde Park Avenue. The walk will meet at Forest Hills Station (Upper Level). Advance registration is recommended. More details here:
Speak up for safety and transit improvements for Hyde Park Ave! The City of Boston is holding an open house next week to gather feedback about conditions on Hyde Park Ave between Forest Hills Station and Wolcott Square. Please spread the word.
Can you speak up about the need for safety improvements for people walking and biking and dedicated bus lanes?
Hyde Park Ave Open House
Tuesday, February 11, 7:00 pm
@ Hyde Park Police Station
1249 Hyde Park Ave, Hyde Park, MA 02136
Hyde Park Ave is the crucial link between Roslindale and Hyde Park. This road serves several bus routes and over 10,000 bus riders every weekday. Crashes involving people walking, biking, and driving happen regularly along this corridor, and a stretch of it is on the City of Boston’s Vision Zero High Crash Network map. If you support a Hyde Park Ave that improves bus service and is safer for all, please let the City of Boston know!
Not able to attend the open house? BTD has launched a survey to collect feedback.
Thanks to our friends at Livable Streets for the event announcement.
We had a full house at the Rozzie Square Theater on Tuesday night this week to hear from Boston Transportation Department Transit Director Matt Moran about planned mobility upgrades for Roslindale. The two points of focus of Matt’s presentation were the Washington Street corridor (between Roslindale Square and Forest Hills) and Hyde Park Avenue (between Wolcott Square and Forest Hills). Bus riders depend heavily on both corridors; moreover, although they outnumber car drivers, they are stuck in the same stand-still traffic at rush hour. The improvement that appears to be the closest to fruition is a southbound afternoon bus/bike-lane on Washington Street, but several improvements for mass transit riders and cyclists are planned for both streets.
We’re pleased to share BTD’s complete presentation from the event, which outlines several other planned improvements in addition to the bus/bike lane. Now it’s our job to make sure the City gets positive and encouraging feedback from residents. Change can’t come soon enough!
We learned with dismay of another recent serious pedestrian incident in our neighborhood, this one at the intersection of Hyde Park Ave and Arlington Street. As is frequently the case, it appears that poor street design was a contributing (perhaps primary) factor, and excessive speed resulted in more serious injuries. If the city gets serious about Vision Zero, we should see fewer and fewer of these tragedies.
Full text of the article from the Roslindale Bulletin below; props to the Bulletin for now posting the entire weekly paper online:
Pedestrian injured crossing Hyde Park Ave.
A pedestrian was hit by a car on Saturday, Jan. 19, at approximately 5:45 p.m.
Neighbors said when it happened they heard a smash and a scream. They said the ambulance and police showed up to the scene, as well as, the Boston Fire Department.
But such an accident is something that neighbors would say is not surprising, considering how fast the cars tend to speed through that intersection.
Nijha Middleton, who has been living on that intersection of Hyde Park Avenue and Arlington Street for three years, was home during the time of the accident that night.
When she looked out the window, she said she saw a woman lying in the middle of the street, and the girl who witnessed it screamed and called 911 standing on the sidewalk. Then she said she saw police and ambulances attend and family members running to the stricken woman.
“It looked really bad,” she said, explaining that the it took the EMTs awhile to put the victim in the ambulance.
According to the police report, the pedestrian has no lifethreatening injuries and the investigation is still ongoing.
Middleton said that such accidents is likely to happen at that intersection because of the speeding cars, lack of speed limit signs and lights, and having no crossing guard.
“People are such in a rush, they never really want to stop, so it makes it difficult to cross the street,” she said. She often walks on that intersection herself and said that almost every other morning she’s scared to cross the street.
“Maybe there needs to be a point that they have to put a stopping light, so everyone can stop rushing,” she said.
In light of this and other recent incidents in the neighborhood, WalkUP Roslindale member Alan Wright sent the following letter to the editor, which may appear in an upcoming edition of the paper. Thanks to Alan for highlighting the underlying factors and mentioning WalkUP’s efforts to push for change:
Dear Editor,
Thank you for reporting on the injury of a pedestrian who was crossing Hyde Park Avenue. This is the 3rd such incident in the past two weeks with two pedestrians killed when struck by dangerous drivers – one in Roslindale and another in Dorchester. It is important to note that these were not accidents, as was reported, for the pedestrians were not accidentally in the cross walks, but crashes in which drivers drove their vehicles recklessly. While the City of Boston has begun an important effort to improve pedestrian safety with the Vision Zero project much work needs to be done. In Roslindale an effort is underway by the citizen group WalkUP Rozzie to get the City to make changes now. For too long our streets have been designed for the benefit of motorists. Simple changes such as speed humps and sidewalk extensions can slow traffic and provide more protection to pedestrians and bicyclists.
Alan Wright