Author: WalkMassachusetts

WalkBoston Comments on the South Boston Seaport Strategic Transit Plan

WalkBoston Comments on the South Boston Seaport Strategic Transit Plan

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July 24, 2020 | WalkBoston Comments on the South Boston Seaport Strategic Transit Plan

To:
Brian P. Golden, Director Boston Planning & Development Agency
Chris Osgood, Chief of Streets
Councilor Wu, Chair Planning, Development and Transportation
Councilor Flynn, District 2

WalkBoston appreciates the opportunity to comment on the plan and are glad to see that a broad set of options are under consideration. We also are glad that a diversity of perspectives is represented by the four criteria used: Expand, Rely, Respect and Equalize.

We offer the following comments and look forward to hearing from you with responses to our comments and the opportunity to comment again as the plan is advanced.

  1. We are pleased that Improving Pedestrian Connections has emerged as one of the top candidates for short term implementation and agree that this strategy will serve many people and improve transit access and use for a broad range of users and locations.
  2. After reviewing the options for short term strategies that are now under consideration, we believe that an evaluation that gives greater weight to Equalize as a value would better serve the needs of the District and of Boston as a whole.

The strategies with the highest Equalize ratings are:

  • Expand Off-Peak Transit Service 100 points
  • Dedicated Transit Corridors 70 points
  • North Station – South Station – South Boston Seaport Direct Bus or Shuttle Service 61 points
  • Bus or Shuttle connection from Nubian Square to South Boston Seaport Link via Broadway 60 points
  • Bus or Shuttle connection from Central Square to South Boston Seaport via LMA and Nubian Square 58 points

While we are pleased that Expanding Off-Peak Transit Service has been flagged as one of the top strategies, we are concerned that Extend Private and Consolidated Shuttles on A St to Broadway has also been given a top rating as this is the ONLY strategy among all of those evaluated that received a negative rating for Equalize, and that it actually increases travel time for many transit users.

We believe that the Bus or Shuttle connection from Nubian Square to South Boston Seaport Link via Broadway or the Bus or Shuttle connection from Central Square to South Boston Seaport via LMA and Nubian Square (# 2 and 3 in overall ratings) should be included as one of the strategies to be advanced. These two options also directly serve some of Boston’s neighborhoods with the greatest number and density of people of color.

  1. There seems to be a disconnect between this BPDA Plan and the work of the Public Works Department on the Northern Avenue Bridge. As WalkBoston and a number of our fellow advocates have commented, we strongly disagree with the plan to allow shuttle buses to use a new Northern Avenue Bridge because it will negatively impact people walking and biking on the bridge, will require that the bridge be very large and expensive, and because it provides very little benefit to shuttle users.

None of the numerous bus service improvements suggested and reviewed in the South Boston Seaport Strategic Transit Plan (short or long term) are shown to be using a future Northern Avenue Bridge. The bridge itself is called out as a strategy, but it is not incorporated into any of the other strategies – all of the routes that cross the Fort Point Channel are shown using the Summer Street or Congress Street Bridges. We urge the Public Works Department to look again at its proposal and eliminate the use of the bridge for shuttle buses.

WalkBoston looks forward to working with you as this plan progresses.

‘Safe driving during COVID-19’ PSA graphics

‘Safe driving during COVID-19’ PSA graphics

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Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, lower traffic volumes have led to dangerous driving speeds in communities across the Commonwealth. High driving speeds contributed to a doubled roadway fatality rate in the month of April in Massachusetts. Driver speeding affects all road users by making walking and rolling conditions unsafe and uncomfortable.

With the safer-at-home advisory still in place, increased numbers of people are walking, rolling, and running in their communities. To make roadways safe for all users, drivers must take responsibility to not exceed the posted speed limit and to yield to walkers and rollers who are using street space to maintain physical distance in areas with narrow sidewalks.

To support communities who are seeing dangerously high traffic speeds and unsafe driving behavior, WalkBoston partnered with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health Mass in Motion (MiM) and MORE Advertising to develop a social media campaign that MiM coordinators can use to raise awareness about safer pandemic driving behavior.

To broaden the reach of this important message, we invite all communities and individuals to use these graphics on your social media or other town communication platforms.

These graphics are set up for Facebook. Consider adding the following language as a comment to your social media post:

  • Keep our roads safe for everyone!
  • Safe driving is still important. Keep our roads safe for all.

Please consider every street a shared street and stay safe!

4 PSA graphic options (click for full size, and then right click to “save image as”):

 

WalkBoston 30th Annual Celebration – save the (new) date, Sept 23rd

WalkBoston 30th Annual Celebration – save the (new) date, Sept 23rd

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Please save the date, with more info & registration link to follow – on September 23rd at 5pm, we’ll gather on Zoom!

WalkBoston is celebrating 30 years of making Massachusetts safer and easier to walk. This year’s keynote speaker is Mark Fenton, a nationally recognized public health, planning, and transportation consultant, an advocate for active transportation, and former host of the “America’s Walking” series on PBS television.

This year’s celebration will recognize the following groups with Golden Shoe Awards:

  • Boston Public Library | Renovations that enhance walkability
  • Coalition for a Better Acre Walking Champions | Advocating for safer walking in Lowell
  • Tufts Health Plan Foundation & Boston Age Strong Commission | Advancing age-friendly walking throughout Massachusetts

Thank you for all your support over the years: we look forward to celebrating with you! Any questions, please send an email to info@walkboston.org

Joint Comment Letter – Recommendations for Boston’s Healthy Streets COVID Response

Joint Comment Letter – Recommendations for Boston’s Healthy Streets COVID Response

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Below is the letter Boston Cyclists Union, MassBike, LivableStreets Alliance and WalkBoston sent to Chief of Streets Chris Osgood regarding Boston’s Healthy Streets plan on June 16, 2020.

June 16, 2020
Chris Osgood, Chief of Streets
1 City Hall Square, Room 603
Boston, MA 02201

Dear Chief Osgood,

On May 12th, the Boston Transportation Department (BTD) presented a plan to the City Council for adapting streets for COVID-19 response and recovery. However, we are concerned about the focus and scope of the first phase of the Healthy Streets plan that the Transportation Department announced on May 30th, and want to ensure these issues are addressed before future phases of the plan are implemented:

Equity

The most glaring issue with the Healthy Streets plan is the lack of attention paid and investment made in the Black and brown neighborhoods that are disproportionately suffering from the health and economic impacts of the pandemic. As early as April, members of this group reached out to BTD staff with specific recommendations for tactical interventions in the most impacted communities. These recommendations came directly from community leaders and individuals in Mattapan, Hyde Park, Roxbury, and Dorchester. Almost none of these recommendations have been included in the first phase of the Healthy Streets plan.

Additionally, the City has offered no transparency or criteria for how they chose the first phase projects and no timeline or criteria for how they will choose and implement additional phases of the plan. This seemingly arbitrary approach has already compounded the pre-existing inequitable investment in streets in our communities of color, and will likely only exacerbate these existing inequities of investment if not addressed explicitly and immediately.

Bike Network

The Healthy Streets plan only includes implementation of bike lanes on downtown corridors. We know that a network of bike lanes are essential infrastructure for safe travel — at all times, as well as during this time of physical distancing. The recent death of a person biking on Cummins Highway on June 9, 2020 only underscores the urgency of building safe infrastructure in all neighborhoods, not just in the city’s core. While protected bike lanes on downtown streets are long overdue, the corridors laid out in the Healthy Streets plan do not build out the network that is required for people to travel safely throughout the city. Go Boston 2030 provides a clear plan for where interventions are needed. We recommend prioritizing these corridors for quick-build protected bike lanes in Phase 2 of the Healthy Streets plan:

  • Cummins Highway
  • Malcolm X Boulevard, from Nubian Square to the Southwest Corridor
  • Albany Street, from lower Roxbury to South Boston
  • Western Ave, in Allston and Brighton
  • Hyde Park Avenue
  • Dorchester Avenue
  • American Legion Highway
  • Columbus Ave, from Mass Ave to the Downtown Network
  • Columbia Road
  • Columbus Ave, in Roxbury
  • Cambridge Street in Allston, from Union Square to the Charles River
  • Commonwealth Ave from the BU Bridge to the Bowker Overpass
  • East Broadway and Summer Street, in South Boston

As street space is reconfigured to allow for outdoor dining and retail, it’s important that plans for protected bike lanes are incorporated into the new layouts. For example, Charles Street is a key corridor in the protected bike network, but the neighborhood civic association is calling for a lane reduction that only accommodates outdoor dining, not protected bike infrastructure. Neighborhood associations should not be given the power to supersede years of public process that identified the need to create a critical bike network link on a corridor like Charles Street. It is clear that both outdoor dining space and protected bike infrastructure could be achieved there.

Many Main Streets and business associations are in support of swiftly repurposing parking lanes into cafe seating (as was installed on Hanover Street in the North End), which leaves the travel lane to be repurposed for critical mobility access. Improving safety for people walking and biking to Main Streets and other commercial districts is a key goal of Go Boston 2030, and COVID-19 response and recovery plans must align with this goal.

Enforcement + Policing

We have already provided several recommendations to Mayor Walsh regarding the role of policing and enforcement on our streets (see attached for reference). As outlined in the general recommendations to follow, it’s important that any adaptations to streets for COVID-19 response and recovery do not require police enforcement. As has been made so apparent in the last several weeks, policing is not a solution for street safety in communities of color. It’s important that the City develop a plan for how these interventions can be maintained and enforced without a police presence. We recommend that the City facilitate a community-led program which can be maintained by local organizations and residents.

Pedestrian Experience

The City should prioritize automatic recall of WALK signals in low-income and communities of color which have been most impacted by COVID-19, as well as WALK signals that are close to the most heavily used bus stops (which are already highlighted on the City’s Healthy Streets map). This work should be included in Phase 1 and should begin now. It is a long overdue and basic adjustment to all signals in Boston.

We already recommended in mid-April that BTD automate WALK signals so pedestrians do not have to push buttons. It is one less surface to touch and potentially contract/spread disease. Brookline, Cambridge, and Somerville have already implemented this effort.

Lack of Engagement with Community Partners

We understand there are staff capacity limitations for rapid response and tactical implementations, especially due to COVID-19. As many other cities have done, we believe it is critical for the City to partner with Main Streets organizations, community groups, advocacy organizations, and other partners to implement, manage, and help communicate about these interventions.

We have offered, on numerous occasions, to deploy our own staff to act as a liaison to community groups and to engage with community members to help identify neighborhood needs. As you know, the City has already worked with us to conduct community outreach and support City-led efforts in the past. We have community trust and a track record of success. Without explicit collaboration with community partners, the City will not be able to implement and manage tactical streets interventions at the scale and pace needed.

Communication, Data Collection, and Measuring Success

While we support the concept of “the pilot is the process,” this does not mean implementing quick-build or tactical projects without a proper strategy to inform the community, collect feedback, and measure success.

Many other communities have strong, established strategies for communications and measurements of success for these projects that can be used as models for Boston efforts. The City should develop a strong plan for monitoring these interventions, including relying on staff, consultants, and volunteers to count people walking and biking (and collect gender and race data), and using automatic technology to measure vehicle speeds and volume. The City can coordinate with employers to better understand how workers are commuting.

In addition, clear coordination between BTD’s Transit Team and Active Transportation Team is critical to ensure that the needs of transit users are balanced with the safety needs of those who are walking and biking (and those who would if there was a connected network). The Transit Team is overdue in developing a clear bus network plan that is based on public process, data, and analysis that takes equity, safety, and mobility needs into account. The City must balance rapid response with adherence to long-standing network plans, and ensure that building out the bus priority network does not preclude a safe bike network and safe pedestrian infrastructure.

We look forward to working with the City to ensure that we adapt our streets as rapidly and effectively as possible to respond to the current health and economic challenges.

Sincerely,

Becca Wolfson, Boston Cyclists Union
Stacy Thompson, LivableStreets Alliance
Galen Mook, MassBike
Stacey Beuttell, WalkBoston

CC: Mayor Martin J. Walsh, Boston City Council

Comment Letter on Recommendations around the Role of Police Enforcement in Vision Zero and Removal of Captain Danilecki from the Vision Zero Task Force

Comment Letter on Recommendations around the Role of Police Enforcement in Vision Zero and Removal of Captain Danilecki from the Vision Zero Task Force

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June 9, 2020

Mayor Martin J. Walsh

1 City Hall Square, Suite 500

Boston, MA

Dear Mayor Walsh,

As members of the Boston Vision Zero Task Force, we urge you to reform the way the Boston Police Department engages with the City’s Vision Zero program and to remove Captain Danilecki from the Vision Zero Task Force. 

In your comments to the press on Thursday, June 4, you committed to making Boston a leader when it comes to battling racism, saying: “We are listening — I am listening — to the voices and the messages of our black neighbors who are harmed by systemic racism every single day. As elected officials, it’s time to listen and learn and keep those voices at the center of the conversation.” As many have noted already, listening isn’t enough. Our Black and brown communities need concrete actions from our elected officials. Central to these conversations is the role of our transportation system in perpetuating racism. 

Boston has a legacy of destroying vibrant Black communities to make space for highways, creating barriers between certain neighborhoods and critical resources. Many streets in Black and brown communities act as conduits for cars to pass through quickly, without regard for the effect this has on people who live there. BIPOC communities often don’t have sufficient walking or biking infrastructure and lack access to high quality public transit, which in turn leads to well-documented public health disparities. Layered on top of these injustices is the violent reality of policing on our streets. 

We have long been concerned by the attitude and role that the various Boston Police Department representatives demonstrate at monthly Vision Zero Task Force meetings. When reporting on the details of fatal car crashes, officers have consistently engaged in victim-blaming, either suggesting or outright attributing a person’s death to their own fault. This attitude runs counter to the very concept of street safety and Vision Zero that the Boston Police Department is supposed to uphold. On top of this, it is clear that not all officers at Task Force meetings are trained or even aware of the Vision Zero program. 

Any conversation about moving away from enforcement as a community must include moving away from enforcement in transportation as well — and we should start with fundamentally rethinking the role of police and enforcement in Vision Zero. 

  • Remove police enforcement as a tenet of Vision Zero effective immediately. Law enforcement nationwide often make race-based stops and searches which further inflict harm, violence, and trauma in communities of color.

  • Instead of relying on police, use automated enforcement to address speeding, which is the cause of most fatal crashes. We are calling on you to champion state legislation that would allow automated enforcement explicitly built on equity principles (see attached FAQ for more details). 

  • Work with the City Council to pass an ordinance banning facial recognition technology in Boston communities. This would also establish necessary civil liberty protections for the use of automated enforcement in the future.

  • Ensure adequate long term funds for crash data collection and analysis. It is shameful that it took two years of advocacy from our organizations and several City Councilors to secure funding for a single civilian research and crash data analyst position within BPD after grant funding for the position ran out. 

  • Reduce the BPD budget and reallocate resources for social programs designed to strengthen communities. Follow the calls from organizations such as the Muslim Justice League, Families for Justice as Healing, Youth Justice and Power Union, and others.

  • Create a diversion program for any nonviolent traffic- and transportation-related infractions. For example, the City can provide front and rear lights to cyclists who may be traveling without them after dark or offer educational opportunities in lieu of fines for other similar minor and non-violent offenses. 


And lastly, in addition to changing the relationship between streets, enforcement, and Vision Zero, we are calling on you to condemn the actions of Captain Danilecki, who currently serves as the BPD designee on the City’s Vision Zero Task Force. 

Captain Danilecki’s violent actions against protestors exercising their right to gather peacefully at a white supremacist rally in Boston on August 31, 2019 are well-documented. More recently, Captain Danilecki was filmed acting in an aggressive, escalatory, and unacceptable manner towards peaceful protestors on May 31, 2020. 

We understand there has been at least one formal complaint filed with the BPD internal affairs division based on a video of Captain Danilecki’s behavior from that recent demonstration, and we hope that he is held accountable through that process. In the meantime, we are calling for the immediate removal of Captain Danilecki from the Vision Zero Task Force. It is unacceptable for an officer who engages in brutal tactics against civilians to be the liaison between BPD and those of us who are fighting to make our streets safer. 

We believe Boston is capable of achieving zero traffic fatalities and serious injuries on our streets. However, we will not have achieved our goal of safe streets if officer-initiated enforcement remains a tenet of Boston’s Vision Zero Action Plan, and furthermore, if Boston police officers are not held accountable for engaging in racist and aggressive tactics. We hope you agree and will take immediate action. 

Sincerely,

Becca Wolfson, Boston Cyclists Union

Stacy Thompson, LivableStreets Alliance 

Stacey Beuttell, WalkBoston

Cc:
Chief of Streets Chris Osgood,
Transportation Commissioner Greg Rooney,
Chief of Police William Gross,
Boston City Council