Category: Statewide Efforts

Golden Shoe Award winners for March 2016 Annual Meeting

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.

MassDOT Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Program

MassDOT Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Program

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With MassDOT and the Massachusetts Dept of Public Health (DPH), WalkBoston and MassBike are helping develop and implement pedestrian and bicycle safety strategies aimed at achieving the state’s Strategic Highway Safety Plan (SHSP) goal of reducing fatalities and injuries among bicyclists and pedestrians by 20% in the next 5 years. 

The three major components of the strategy are:
1.     Enforcement
2.     Education/Awareness
3.     Preparation of communities for infrastructure improvements 

The pilot program is focused on 12 communities which were selected based on high rates of non-motorist crashes, high rates of walking and biking activity, and participation in the DPH Mass in Motion program (8 of the 12 communities selected are Mass in Motion communities).

The community-based efforts to increase walking and biking in Mass in Motion communities provides an excellent platform to support increased pedestrian and bicycle safety strategies, and then make effective infrastructure investments to make the built environment safer for those trips.

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MassDOT Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety Awareness and Enforcement Program

MassDOT Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety Awareness and Enforcement Program

18 communities participate in the MassDOT multi-disciplinary program to improve bicycle and pedestrian safety in Massachusetts. One of the components of the MassDOT program is to conduct walk and bike assessments that identify infrastructure challenges to walking and biking and recommend short- and long-term improvements. These assessments are also a means of building local knowledge of the importance of well-designed pedestrian and bicycle facilities.

Communities involved:

Year 1 – BrocktonCambridgeFall RiverHaverhillLynnNew BedfordNewtonPittsfieldQuincySalemSomervilleWatertown

Year 2 – Brookline, Dennis, Holyoke, Northampton, Waltham, Worcester

Community Safe Routes to School

Community Safe Routes to School

The Community Safe Routes to School (CSRTS) Program was a WalkBoston initiative jointly funded by the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Foundation, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT)and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (MDPH). The purpose of the CSRTS program was to study how best to apply the Safe Routes to School concept to promote changes in the travel patterns of school children by working both inside the schools and with a broad set of community partners. The four communities who participated in the program were Brockton, Newton, Stoneham and Watertown.

WalkBoston Community SRTS Final Report