Our Golden Shoes Awards recognize individuals, agencies, municipalities and companies exemplifying the ideals of WalkMassachusetts’ mission. The winners accept their award during our Annual Celebration on April 9th, which will be in-person starting at 5:30pm (and live streamed starting at 6:30pm) from the Venture Cafe @ 1 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02142. Register here to join us in celebrating & honoring their work! (link will be sent to virtual attendees early afternoon on 4/9).

This year’s Golden Shoe Awards go to…Direct Vision Study, Samuels & Associates / Lyrik, and our keynote speaker Worcester City Councilor Etel Haxhiaj. Congrats to all the winners!

Direct Vision Study

Direct vision refers to a driver’s ability to see outside their vehicle without relying on indirect vision devices like mirrors or camera displays. We’ll be recognizing the project team that published this report and performed measurements of fleet vehicles across the Commonwealth.

We especially appreciate this section of the report website:

“MassDOT has adopted a Safe System approach to roadway safety. This means we are interested in all the various components that contribute to — or detract from — roadway safety. One of those components is Safe Vehicles. As stated in our 2023 Strategic Highway Safety Plan, we intend to take an active role to affect change in vehicle design, features, and use. Safe vehicles are a core component of a Safe System Approach, as vehicle sizes and designs affect the occurrence and severity of collisions.

While vehicle design is usually thought of as a federal responsibility, we believe we have a role to play at the state level to improve the safety of vehicles that travel on state highways and roads in our cities and towns. This study on direct vision will help us better understand which vehicles we should purchase in the future to achieve better safety outcomes.”

Samuels & Associates / Lyrik

Samuels and Associates are the developers behind the Lyrik building project over the Massachusetts Turnpike in Boston’s Back Bay, an air-rights project that created new public space in an area that was once a windswept overpass between Newbury and Boylston Streets. The organization’s commitment to placemaking and community engagement in their developments has played a pivotal role in creating more walkable and connected urban spaces. We’ll be recognizing the project team that helped create this site.

Keynote Speaker: Worcester City Councilor Etel Haxhiaj

Etel Haxhiaj is a Worcester City Councilor who was recently selected for the T4MA Transportation Justice Institute, joining other elected officials from across the Commonwealth. She has been a dedicated advocate for Complete Streets, lowering speed limits to 25 mph, establishing safety zones in high-risk pedestrian areas, and championing zero-fare transportation.

We hope to see you on April 9th!

The winners accept their award during our Annual Celebration on April 9th, which will be in-person starting at 5:30pm from the Venture Cafe @ 1 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02142. Register here to join us in celebrating & honoring their work! Can’t attend in person? Register for the livestream that will begin when the program itself starts at 6:30pm, or make a donation as part of the event that will help support WalkMassachusetts’ work throughout the year.

To read about previous Golden Shoe winners, click here.

This post has been updated on 1/21/25 with the tentative route.
Please RSVP at bottom of page!

Join WalkMassachusetts this winter to learn how to lead a walk audit with a North Shore Walk Audit Academy program! We’ll start things off with a walk audit training at 10am on January 25, 2025 in Beverly, MA, which will include a demonstration walk audit in downtown Beverly starting at Gentile Brewing Company. Thank you to our convening partner, the Beverly Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee.

What is a walk audit?

Walk audits are a tool for getting community input about walking conditions based on observation and your own lived experience. This firsthand information can add important detail to more technical information, and help improve traffic safety in your area. 

What: Walk Audit Training hosted by WalkMassachusetts
When: Saturday 1/25/2025 10am – 1pm
Where: Gentile Brewing Company, 59 Park Street, Beverly, MA 01915
Process: Group session, 1 mile walk audit Rantoul & Cabot Streets, Group Debrief.

This training will familiarize you with existing walk audit materials and protocols which will enable you to conduct audits in your own community. Learning materials and videos are also available on WalkMassachusetts’ website. 

WalkMassachusetts’ Walk Audit Academy training uses a ‘flipped classroom’ style; after the kick off meeting, participants review materials/training videos on their own. Any time spent on Zoom together is used to react to the materials, answer questions, and bring up locations on maps for discussion in preparation for leading your own walk audit.

Route for the walk audit

The route is one mile and passes eight locations where there were pedestrian vs motor vehicle incidents, and two bicycle vs motor vehicle incidents. This is a very good area to study because of the concentration of incidents in a relatively small area. It also happens to be an area where pedestrian use has increased and the infrastructure is fairly new. This is a link to the map and the described walking route from the brewery is below.

• right out of the front door up to Federal St
• right again to the intersection with Rantoul St
• right onto Rantoul St
• right on Railroad Ave
• left on Park St
• right on Pleasant St
• right on River St
• Right on Federal St
• Right on Park St
• Gentile Brewery on the left

For any questions that are not answered above:

Beverly Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee:
Carl Kooyoomjian – ckk@kooyoomjian.com

WalkMassachusetts: Brendan Kearney – bkearney@walkmass.org

WalkMassachusetts is a 501c3 nonprofit organization that works to make walking safer and easier in Massachusetts, to encourage better health, a cleaner environment, and more vibrant communities; consider supporting their efforts with a donation. Whether you’re part of a municipal bike/ped committee or just interested in making your community on the North Shore safer for walking, we’d love you to join us on January 25th! Please RSVP below.

How Can Spatial Thinking Help in Advocating for Pedestrians?

Speaker: Professor Sumeeta Srinivasan, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University, WalkMassachusetts Board Member

Yesterday, Professor Sumeeta Srinivasan spoke about how GIS, or Geographic Information Systems, includes analytic tools that help make maps and conduct spatial analysis. In this brainstorming session, we explored ways communities can use GIS to advocate for themselves.

Key Resources and Examples:

1. Kate McKlean’s Sensory Mapping Projects
2. Cool Walks in Barcelona
3. ShadeMap – Shade Equity Analysis
4. Tree Canopy Assessments
5. MapStore – GIS Mapping Tool
6. WalkMA Example Storymap: Fatal Pedestrian Crashes in MA 2023
7. Fort Collins Walk Audit
8. South End Neighborhood Evening Walk Assessment, Springfield

If you are interested in connecting with us about audits and improving walkability, please contact us. We would love to hear from you!

 

“Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Everyday, I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.” –Søren Kierkegaard

As part of the Summer Walk Series, last week WalkMassachusetts had the pleasure of hosting a walk through Cambridgeport. This event aimed to bring together pedestrians (and some cyclists!) to explore the city on foot and to learn about local projects, area history, and built environment changes. 

The two-mile walk started on the south side of the B.U. Bridge, brought participants through Magazine Beach Park and continued northeast along Magazine Street to Massachusetts Ave. Our group of 30 pedestrians met with a variety of guest speakers who shared valuable information about the B.U. Bridge Safety Alliance, Magazine Beach Park, the Allston Intermodal Project, St. Augustine African Orthodox Christian Church, and the history of the Inner Belt and anti-highway activism in Cambridge. Exploration of this landscape along with its varied histories, projects, and organizations helped to illuminate the struggles, changes, and cultural dynamics of the built environment–aspects which may often go unnoticed but that nonetheless inform our everyday experiences. 

At the beginning of the evening, co-executive director Althea Wong-Achorn asked everyone to think about how heat affects the pedestrian experience and what types of interventions (i.e. increasing tree and vegetable cover, cool pavements) could be made to improve the experience. The air temperature hovered in the high 80s while surface temperatures in the parking lot where we met adjacent to the B.U. Bridge reached 113 degrees. In comparison, the surface temperature in Magazine Beach Park, thanks to the cooling effects of its vegetation, was 76 degrees.

As we crossed over the Charles River, our group remarked on the challenging pedestrian and bike infrastructure on and around the B.U. Bridge, including unprotected bike lanes, complicated pedestrian crossings, narrow footpaths, and a dangerous roundabout for all road users. Once in Magazine Beach Park, the calmness of the urban, riverfront park was met with the constant hum of traffic emanating from the elevated section of I-90 across the water in Allston. A final observation was the pleasant, tree-shaded streets of Cambridgeport.  

All in all, this walk was a delightful opportunity to come together, share knowledge and experience, and take pleasure in the simplicity of walking. It provided participants with a chance to broaden their perspective, connect with each other, learn about Cambridgeport, discover something new and at the very least to get outside. Thank you to everyone who braved the heat to join us. We look forward to seeing you on our next walk!

We also want to thank all of our wonderful speakers: Ken Carlson, BU Bridge Safety Alliance; Stacey Beuttell, Senior Director, Nature in the City Program, Mass Audubon; Fred Yalouris, Allston I-90 Task Force; Reverend Kit Eccles, Pastor of St. Augustine’s Church; Steve Kaiser, traffic engineer and author; Kit Rawlins, Assistant Director, Cambridge Historical Society. In particular we appreciate the hard work and organizing efforts of Cathie Zusy and Anita Johnson for making this walk possible! For more information on the histories, projects, and organizations highlighted on his walk, please visit the links below:

• B.U. Bridge Safety Alliance
• Magazine Beach Park Nature Center
• St. Augustine’s Church 
• Allston/I-90 Intermodal Project
• The Inner Belt