Author: WalkMassachusetts

Cambridge Street signals walk

Cambridge Street signals walk

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Recently, Brendan Kearney and Wendy Landman joined the Boston Transportation Department’s Stefanie Seskin and Vineet Gupta for a walk down Cambridge Street from City Hall Plaza to Charles Circle (but not including the Circle) to talk everything signals. It was a great chance for WalkBoston to give Stefanie and Vineet some detailed input about the way a number of intersections work (or don’t work) for people on foot. There are a wide variety of intersection types, some that are very complicated with many turning movements and lots of vehicles, people walking and people on bikes, and others that are very simple T-intersections where the signals could be simplified and much more WALK time added. We’re looking forward to BTD’s next steps in thinking about how to make Cambridge Street work more safely for people walking, biking and driving. We will post again as the project progresses over the next 6 months.

making connections to make Stoneham safer for people walking

making connections to make Stoneham safer for people walking

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Earlier this week, WalkBoston staff facilitated a conversation between Stoneham’s Director of Planning & Community Development and a town resident who had read a recent Boston Globe story (“Together, neighbors can thwart speed demons. Here’s how“). She had reached out to WalkBoston with concerns regarding the lack of pedestrian crossings on the stretch of Main Street between North Border Road and Marble/Summer Streets, which is under MassDOT jurisdiction and signed as part of Massachusetts Route 28. South Elementary School is located on the east side of Main Street near the intersection with Summer Street, and she was concerned about her daughter and her friends being able to safely walk to and from school along this high-speed road. The town’s only public bus route, MBTA Route 132, also serves this section of Main Street and requires passengers to cross the wide stretch of road in order to access their origins and destinations.

The director of planning affirmed the resident’s concerns about pedestrian safety on Main Street, and shared a wish list for safe travel to and from school that had been compiled by parents and staff of the South School. She also discussed the potential for a road diet to be implemented on Main Street, which could tie into current planning efforts for a complete streets strategy in downtown Stoneham. She also informed us that approximately $4.2 million in Federal and State transportation funding has been allocated in the Boston MPO’s FY21-25 Transportation Improvement Plan to upgrade the intersection of Main Street, North Border Road, and Pond Street. For next steps, Stoneham will be reaching out to MassDOT District Four to discuss potential methods to improve pedestrian safety on Main Street in the short term.

Hybrid virtual and in-person walk audits expand engagement opportunities in Haverhill

Hybrid virtual and in-person walk audits expand engagement opportunities in Haverhill

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As pandemic restrictions ease and we resume in-person activities, WalkBoston is bringing back our traditional in-person group walk audits while keeping many of the new tools we’ve developed over the last year. 

Haverhill was the first of our Gateway Cities walk audits to benefit from this hybrid approach. Starting in late May, the hybrid walk audit gave participants the option to walk through Downtown Haverhill with us in a group or – using the self-guided walk audit process developed for pandemic walk audits –  to walk on their own at a time that worked better for their schedule. Hybrid walk audits like this one can help us make the process more accessible to a broader range of participants. 

Haverhill residents discuss lighting conditions under the Winter Street bridge during the in-person group walk of Downtown Haverhill.

The flexibility of the hybrid model also created an opportunity for the Haverhill walk audit to include an additional virtual element — a bilingual focus group organized with Haverhill’s Latino Coalition to ensure fuller representation of the community in this project. The focus group added 8 more residents’ voices to the walk audit and gave us new insight into how residents use and would like to change Section 2 of the walking route.

The Downtown Haverhill walk audit illustrates how the larger buffet of participation options we’ve developed over the past year have led to more inclusive and robust community engagement. Have an idea for other ways we can include people in the walk audit process? Let us know!

Comments on Re-Imagining Massachusetts’ Post-Pandemic Transportation System

Comments on Re-Imagining Massachusetts’ Post-Pandemic Transportation System

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Comments to Senate Committee on Re-Imagining Massachusetts Post-Pandemic Resiliency

Dear Senator Hinds and Committee Members:

WalkBoston is Massachusetts’ primary pedestrian advocacy organization, working across the Commonwealth to make it safer and easier for people to walk for all activities of daily living such as access to transit, school and jobs. The COVID-19 pandemic gave stark evidence that walkable neighborhoods and communities are critical to physical and mental health, to reducing isolation and to the resilience of all Massachusetts residents and their neighborhoods.

In light of the pandemic, we have learned that key components of the transportation system to support walking should include:

  • Speed management. We need measures to control, and often reduce, speeds on Commonwealth roadways so that they are safe for all roadway users. During the initial months of the pandemic, there was dangerous speeding on roadways across Massachusetts. MassDOT’s ongoing initiative to create tools and measures to set and manage safe speeds on all MassDOT roadways (other than limited access highways) needs the support and encouragement of the legislature to ensure its success, and then to bring those same measures to municipal roads as well.
  • Safe connections to transit. As we learned during the pandemic, essential workers are more dependent on transit than many others. We need fully accessible transit and bus stops throughout Massachusetts, including safe street crossings and sidewalk connections to adjacent neighborhoods. These are crucial to a transit system that works for everyone.
  • More local funding to repurpose public space. The overwhelmingly popular MassDOT Shared Streets and Spaces program that was introduced in response to the pandemic has demonstrated that municipalities are interested and ready to rethink how they use their streets to enable more and safer outdoor recreation,
    commerce, community activities, and mobility.
  • Chapter 90 and Complete Streets. Chapter 90 funds have been traditionally used to build and maintain municipal roads without requirements that sidewalks and crosswalks be included. We suggest that the Committee review this standard and consider including Complete Streets measures within Chapter 90, similar to those requirements set by the legislature for MassDOT roadways.
  • DCR Parkways. DCR’s recently released (and long delayed) Parkway Master Plan clearly demonstrates that immediate action is needed to vastly improve safety for people bicycling and walking. Parkways are cultural and historic landmarks and should remain fully integrated components of parks and open spaces, used and enjoyed by people for walking, rolling, and riding as originally intended. With a commitment to accelerated improvement in partnership with MassDOT, parkways should remain under DCR’s purview. We urge the legislature to set funding and regulatory standards for DCR as follows:
    • Adopt MassDOT’s Complete Streets guidelines as their default design standard for all parkways;
    • Utilize MassDOT crash portal data to implement quick-build improvements on the most dangerous parkway roads and intersections within the next 12 months;
    • Align its parkway speed limits with local speed limits, especially in municipalities where the default speed has been reduced to 25 miles/hour or less;
    • Provide DCR with the budget needed to complete the recommendations in the DCR Parkway Master Plan;
    • Require DCR to set measurable goals to reduce the number of serious and fatal crashes on DCR roadways and report publicly and annually on progress toward these goals; and
    • Require DCR to add analysis and recommendations for several key parkways currently missing from the plan.

Thank you for the opportunity to comment.

Stacey Beuttell
Executive Director, WalkBoston
405 Waltham Street, Suite 309
Lexington, MA 02421
617-367-9255

RealEstate by Boston.com: “Together, neighbors can thwart speed demons. Here’s how”

RealEstate by Boston.com: “Together, neighbors can thwart speed demons. Here’s how”

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RealEstate by Boston.com: “Together, neighbors can thwart speed demons. Here’s how”

Assisting Mahoney, Rana, and others is WalkBoston, a pedestrian-advocacy organization that works throughout the Commonwealth, not just the capital. This nonprofit can pinpoint a road’s jurisdiction and identify key decision-makers: elected officials, business groups, disability organizations, and neighborhood associations. Often WalkBoston will guide them on a “walk audit’’ of the targeted area. “We talk about destinations that people want to access,’’ said Stacey Beuttell, the nonprofit’s executive director. “Can they access them through crossings? What are the posted speeds? Should we narrow the travel lanes or add bike lanes?’’

Posted June 24, 2021