Golden Shoe Award winners for March 2016 Annual Meeting
As presented at this year’s annual event on March 22, 2016
Charlotte Fleetwood – City of Boston Vision Zero Champion
As the Senior Planner for the Transportation Department, Charlotte is project manager for Vision Zero Boston and Boston Green Links. She helped develop Boston’s Complete Streets Guidelines that put pedestrians, bicyclists and transit users on equal footing with motor-vehicle drivers. To implement these guidelines, she has served as project manager for rebuilding Boylston Street and Audubon Circle in the Fenway district and Central Square, East Boston. Projects now include narrower travel lanes, new bike lanes, greenscapes of street trees, sidewalk widenings and curb extensions to guide traffic slowly through the area, while improving pedestrian safety and producing great public spaces. She was a senior planner during the Big Dig and played a role in the Greenway and new Charles River parks.
Paul Malkemes, The Boston Project Ministries / Talbot-Norfolk Triangle Neighbors United & David Queeley, Codman Square Neighborhood Development Corporation – Grassroots “Slow Zone” Pioneers
As the Executive Director of The Boston Project Ministries, a faith-based community non-profit that provides staff support to the Talbot-Norfolk Triangle (TNT) Neighbors United, Paul Malkemes has worked tirelessly with residents of Dorchester’s TNT neighborhood over the past two decades to address issues of community concern, including traffic safety and healthy living. As the Director of Eco-Innovation at Codman Square Neighborhood Development Corporation, David Queeley has worked closely with Paul to advance neighbors’ vision to establish TNT as Boston’s first Eco-Innovation District – a clean, healthy, safe and green community with active transportation options and safe streets for all. Paul and David have conducted walk assessments, engaged city agencies and neighborhood stakeholders, and mobilized resident Healthy Community Champions to advance walkability and bikeability in TNT. Their advocacy efforts have resulted in TNT being designated as one of two neighborhood “Slow Zones” as part of the City of Boston’s broader Vision Zero strategy.
Maggie Sachs-Mahmood – Inspiring Student Advocates at Codman Academy
Maggie Sachs-Mahmood, a 10th grade physics teacher at Codman Academy, reached out to WalkBoston in Fall 2014 for guidance on improving pedestrian safety. During the 2013-2014 academic year, a Codman Academy student was struck and seriously injured on Epping Street outside the school. Maggie wanted her students to collect robust data on roadways surrounding their campus in order to make a compelling case for built environment changes right outside their own front door.
After WalkBoston shared strategies for safe, walkable streets and helped the students conduct observations in the neighborhood, Maggie encouraged her students to share their findings with neighborhood groups and at public agency meetings – including at the State House as part of an event alongside MA Public Health Commissioner Monica Bharel. As a result of their efforts, the City of Boston has committed to making Codman Square a focus area of the Vision Zero Boston effort. We celebrate her for training her students to become advocates for walkable environments.