Tag: Speed Humps

WalkUP Roslindale Year in Review 2023 – The year that was…

Matt Lawlor Leave a comment

Well, another year has come and gone and we here at WalkUP Roslindale thought we should pause as the new year gets underway to look back at what seem to us to be major stories/events/improvements to our neighborhood and/or city that would be worth remembering, so:

WINTER

In January, we marked the reconstruction efforts (which continue) for the Square Root/Belgrade Building after a West Roxbury resident lost control of his motor vehicle and plowed it into the unsuspecting building on a Sunday morning the previous December, while also noting that the Square had its first bookstore – Rozzie Bound – since the demise of Village Books lo these many years ago.

SPRING

In April, we marked the very significant rebranding of our long-time walking advocacy partners, WalkBoston, to WalkMassachusetts, reflecting the fact that their work had been all across the state for well more than a decade.

In May, along with everyone else in Boston, we welcomed the Boston Transportation Department’s “safety surge” as they declared the end of eye-droppering street improvements and, among other things, marked the end of the Hunger Games-like Neighborhood Slow Streets program and pointed to a massive, city-wide program to install 500 speed humps per year for the foreseeable future. This was and is a big deal.

In June, we were thrilled to host a community screening of The Street Project at the Rozzie Square Theater (complete with a brief welcome and introduction from Mayor Michelle Wu and attendance by locally-based but internationally-respected urban designer and author Jeff Speck that we described in a post the next month).

SUMMER

In July, we co-hosted a District 5 City Council Candidate Forum with Progressive West Roxbury/Roslindale, the Forum for Racial Equity via Educational Experiences in Hyde Park, Hyde Park Neighborhood Association, Keep Hyde Park Beautiful, Longfellow Area Neighborhood Association, RozzieBikes, and the Ward 18 Democratic Committee.

In September, we hosted a post-Annual/Board meeting public presentation double-header featuring Jarred Johnson from TransitMatters on their Orange Line Extension report and our own Greg Tobin giving an update on the start of construction on the Roslindale Gateway Path. At that meeting, we welcomed new board members Nikki Kong and James Guerrier.

FALL

In October, we happily marked the installation of several speed humps (part of the BTD safety surge and the result, in part, of our post Poplar Street Walk Audit advocacy) on the section of Poplar Street between Washington and Sycamore streets. Motor vehicle operating speeds dropped immediately and permanently.

Finally, in December, we paired our fall board meeting with a presentation from Boston Planning & Development Agency staff on the Squares + Streets program.

 

Initial Poplar Street speed humps are now IN!

Matt Lawlor 5 Comments

Speed humps first appeared in our neighborhood with the Mount Hope-Canterbury Neighborhood Slow Streets installations a couple of years ago, and they have just been installed on the first couple of blocks of Poplar Street leading away from Roslindale Square/Washington Street toward Canterbury (we anticipate signs and more paint alerting drivers to the presence of the humps soon, as is typical). It seems this installation is both part of the Poplar Street safety improvements project for which we recently reaffirmed our support and also the Boston Transportation Department’s overall program of deploying 500 of these humble yet highly effective traffic calming devices citywide on an annual basis. It is worth noting that these are speed humps, not speed bumps – humps like these are much gentler on vehicle suspensions while still being highly effective and sized/placed to achieve the 25 mph citywide default speed limit on streets such as Poplar Street.

The folks at the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) have a useful explainer of the general concept behind speed humps here. We expect more speed humps soon in a nearby part of Roslindale with the imminent installation of the Lower South Street Neighborhood Slow Streets interventions, but we’d love to see them in many more places as quickly as they can be deployed. More of this please!

Tragedy leads to clarity in South Boston…and maybe citywide?

Matt Lawlor 1 Comment

Vision Zero BostonEveryone concerned about traffic violence in Boston, which touches every part of our city, every day, day-in, and day-out, felt incredible sadness at the tragedy late last month in South Boston in which a crash on L Street between reckless drivers resulted in one of them driving onto the curb and killing a 3 year-old boy and injuring his sister. There have been similar tragedies around the city over the years, taking both the young (such as the 5-month old girl killed on Humboldt Street in Roxbury a couple of years ago) and the elderly (such as one of our own neighbors here in Roslindale in 2016) and everyone in between. For whatever reason, perhaps because with Vision Zero as the city’s adopted policy for the last several years, we all have a better collective vocabulary and understanding that these crashes constitute a form of traffic violence that degrades our public spaces and puts us all under threat every time we venture out onto our streets, this tragedy seemed to hit a particularly raw nerve.

And such is that nerve that first-term District 2 City Councilor Ed Flynn has quickly stepped up his game on safe streets to a level that I think every City Councilor will have to match if they aren’t already. Go read “Flynn Recommends 12 Point Safe Streets Plan” over at Caught in Southie and then consider whether the 12 point safe streets plan he is pushing for in that neighborhood deserves to be rolled out, as quickly as humanly possible, to every street in every neighborhood of this city. Below, I have converted the 12 points he raised to a generic list that could be applied anywhere:

  1. A complete traffic study of ________________ and all high traffic roads. [NOTE: This works only if it’s done in the background while proven traffic calming measures are advanced right away, and isn’t ultimately used as a way to force more vehicular traffic through the neighborhoods at higher speeds.]
  2. Reducing the speed limit to 20 MPH throughout all of ____________. [NOTE: Exactly. The recent shift to 25 mph was a compromise. We really should be at 20 mph.]
  3. Speed humps (permanent or temporary to move for plows) and raised crosswalks along _________ and other high traffic roads, near parks and recreation centers where children and seniors gather. [NOTE: Speed humps should be permanent wherever they go. I continue not to see why plowing in Boston is different than the many other snow belt places in North America and really anywhere else that already have speed humps and raised crosswalks.]
  4. 4-way stop signs along _________ and relevant locations throughout ________.
  5. Additional posting of Speed Board Signs on high traffic roads throughout _________ for feedback to reduce speeds.
  6. Blinking Pedestrian Crossing signs at high traffic areas like we have on _____________.
  7. Bumping out our sidewalks at crosswalks on ___________, school zones and elsewhere to shorten crosswalks, make stop signs more visible & narrow our streets to encourage slower speeds.
  8. Road Diets on ___________, one lane from ____________, and speed humps in appropriate locations.
  9. Increased police patrols in order to reduce speed. Increased fines for driving the wrong way on a one-way street and trucks on ____________. [NOTE: It would be good to have more enforcement, but this fight is ultimately about rectifying decades of bad, unsafe street design. Relying on enforcement also raises concerns about profiling of both people of color and immigrants.]
  10. More delineators in high traffic areas reminding drivers to stop for pedestrians; paint in the roads advising drivers to slow, yield and stop.
  11. A Study to determine if _______________ would become safer if they became one-way streets.  [NOTE: I would not support this in my own neighborhood. Narrow two-way streets, also called “Yield Streets,” are perhaps the most effective method of low-tech traffic calming we have.]
  12. Designated time and space for delivery trucks on ________________ to eliminate double parking. [NOTE: Better curb space management needs to be implemented on essentially every street in our city, but especially on major commercial streets.]

 

The Roslindale Pedestrian/Cycling/Transit Infrastructure Report – Inaugural Edition

Matt Lawlor 2 Comments

Going forward, WalkUP Roslindale will try to keep a current inventory of improvements to our neighborhood’s pedestrian, cycling, and transit infrastructure. Accordingly, as of 26 February 2018, the below is what we’re aware of:

  • Flashing Beacon Crosswalks – 3 (complete: Washington/Blue Ledge, Washington/Basile, Washington/South of Ukraine); 3 (partially complete: Centre Street adjacent to the Arboretum)
  • Buffered Bike Lanes – 1.3 miles (N/S on American Legion from Cummins to HP Avenue; N on Washington from WR Parkway to Beech)
  • Protected Bike Lanes – 3.0 miles (E/W on Blackwell Shared Use Path; Arborway from Arboretum Gate to South Street; Arborway from Orchardhill to Forest Hills Cemetery)
  • Speed humps – 0
  • Raised crosswalks – 0
  • Daylighted Crosswalks – 3 (Washington/Blue Ledge, Belgrade/South, Washington/Basile)
  • Bus Priority Facilities – 1 (operational bus/bike lane pilot in December on Washington from Cummins to Ukraine – multi-week pilot expected this spring)
  • Hubway Stations – 0 (hopefully some to come later this year)

We welcome any additions/subtractions to this list. Thanks!!