Annual Celebration – Page 9 – WalkMassachusetts

One minute, one slide: Neighborhood Slow Streets

By WalkMassachusetts | April 4, 2018

Below is a “One Minute, One Slide” presentation shared by a member of the WalkBoston staff.
Text provided is as presented at this year’s annual event on March 29, 2018.

Dorothea Hass

The City of Boston’s Neighborhood Slow Streets program is a new approach to traffic calming requests in Boston.

The aim is to reduce the number and severity of crashes on residential streets, lessen the impacts of cut-through traffic, and add to the quality of life in the neighborhoods.

The first year of the program was a pilot and focused on 2 zones, the Tabot Norfolk Triangle (just outside Codman Square in Dorchester) and the Stonybrook section of Jamaica Plain (close to Green Street on the MBTA Orange Line).

For the next round, the Boston Transportation Department planned to add another 2-3 areas; they received 47 submissions from across the City and selected five new communities to join the program.

WalkBoston works closely with both community members and the transportation staff to make this program a success!

Learn more at: https://www.boston.gov/departments/transportation/neighborhood-slow-streets

One minute, one slide: Complete Streets in Chelsea

By WalkMassachusetts | April 4, 2018

Below is a “One Minute, One Slide” presentation shared by a member of the WalkBoston staff.
Text provided is as presented at this year’s annual event on March 29, 2018.

Adi Nochur

The City of Chelsea, a community of 40,000 people just north of Boston, is promoting health, safety and economic opportunity through the development of Complete Streets that work for all road users.

In 2017 WalkBoston organized two neighborhood walk audits in Chelsea, participated in the City’s Re-Imagining Broadway initiative, and testified in support of the City’s Complete Streets policy to build momentum for safer streets for everyone.

With the policy successfully passed, we now look forward to supporting Complete Streets implementation in 2018, and to highlighting the opportunities for continued progress with a community walk on May 2nd!

Chelsea Park Square Walk Audit

One minute, one slide: WalkMassachusetts Network

By WalkMassachusetts | April 4, 2018

Below is a “One Minute, One Slide” presentation shared by a member of the WalkBoston staff.
Text provided is as presented at this year’s annual event on March 29, 2018.

Stacey Beuttell

Did you know that there is a new complete streets committee and advocacy group called Walk Goshen?

Did you know that the City of New Bedford is putting on a demonstration day to highlight their Safe Routes to Park work?

Did you know that in Melrose, they received complete streets funding to improve pedestrian safety around the middle and high schools? Based on our recommendations, by the way.

You would know all of this if your group were part of WalkBoston’s newest program called the WalkMassachusetts Network!

No money down . . . no need to be a 501(c)(3) . . . no participation requirements!

access to biannual statewide gatherings to learn from your peers
emails chock full of walking information that you need to know
guidance on outreach tools – like how to design an awesome website like our new one!!
Talking points to meet with legislators and convince them that walking is the best!

No limits on this offer. No data breaches to worry about. No collusion with big auto. Guaranteed.

statewide network

One minute, one slide: Unchoke The Throat

By WalkMassachusetts | April 4, 2018

Below is a “One Minute, One Slide” presentation shared by a member of the WalkBoston staff.
Text provided is as presented at this year’s annual event on March 29, 2018.

Bob Sloane

Next month it will be four years that WalkBoston has worked with others on the I-90 project to make sure it welcomes and serves pedestrians in a 21st century way.

In recent 3 months WalkBoston has focused on the throat section of the project, where pedestrians are treated to a narrow path next to moving traffic on Soldiers Field Road – a path that is currently duplicated in all three of the options for the highway reconstruction envisioned for the throat. To develop a better plan, WalkBoston joined with the Charles River Conservancy and hired Sasaki to design possible approaches for paths along the river.

We called the effort “Unchoke the Throat” to point out that the current plans provide only narrow unpleasant places to walk along our historic river, duplicating the narrow unpleasant places to walk that now exist.

With Sasaki’s help, we were able to project a better future for the throat – one that involves looking closely at the river as a potential location for paths in this narrow corridor where so much land is taken by highways that only 8’ remains for a single narrow path where people walk and bike in clouds of air pollution right next to a highway.

Sasaki came up with two options – a boardwalk out over the river or a fill in the shallows of the river where much more space could be provided for paths with buffers to keep them at a more healthful distance from the highway.

Then our team came up with an “#UnchokeTheThroat” video promoting these ideas and sent out over our wide Twitter network. It was timed to impact people’s letter comments written about the 90 project as it was going through the environmental review process.

Want to learn more? See the project page & an upcoming event on April 10th below.

https://walkmass.org/unchokethethroat/

Event: Unchoking the Charles River Throat

Golden Shoe Award Winners For March 2018 Annual Meeting

By WalkMassachusetts | April 2, 2018

As presented at this year’s annual event on March 29, 2018

Underground at Ink Block Team | MassDOT, National Development, Landing Studio, Street Theory, KP Strategies, Visual Dialogue, VHB
The Underground at Ink Block Team transformed an inaccessible wasteland underpass, into a beautifully designed, active urban park that re-connects two neighborhoods. Colorful paths, viewing platforms, bike and vehicle parking, active play areas, and a new waterfront edge each contribute to the complete transformation that you achieved. WalkBoston hopes that the Underground at Ink Block Project inspires the claiming and re-creation of more lost corners of urban environments in Massachusetts. While we always have leftover spaces and edges around urban infrastructure, you have shown that even these places can contribute to the walking environment in a wonderful way.

MassDOT – Secretary Stephanie Pollack, Jonathan Gulliver, Kirk Jackson
National Development – Ted Tye, Kathy McMahon, Naomi Mayeux
Landing Studio – Daniel Adams, Marie Law Adams
Street Theory – Liza Quinonez, Victor “Marka27” Quinonez
KP Strategies – Kristin Phelan
Visual Dialogue – Fritz Klaetke, Susan Battista
VHB – Michael Carragher

MBTA Plan for Accessible Transit Infrastructure (PATI) Project Team | Laura Brelsford, Kathryn Quigley, Chris Hart, Melissa Dullea, Erik Scheier
The PATI Team is helping to make it easier for people to walk to bus stops across the MBTA’s vast network of bus stops. With an amazingly detailed survey of 7,643 bus stops, the work of the PATI Team is opening up new opportunities to improve walking-transit connections that serve Massachusetts’ residents. WalkBoston is certain that the process the PATI Team has undertaken will help to make the Boston region a more walkable and accessible place.

WalkBoston Board Members | Matt Lawlor & Hillary Borcherding
Matt took on the role of Board President and became an amazingly strong advocacy voice for WalkBoston. His passion for WalkBoston’s mission led from Board meetings, to public events, to becoming a founder of WalkUp Rozzie. Matt has been an articulate and persistent cheerleader for strong action. He has been a committed leader for our organizational work; helping to engage other Board members, leading the charge on fundraising and seeing WalkBoston through the completion of a new strategic plan. Matt’s steady hand, ready availability and strong relationships with all of the staff have been a wonderful asset. WalkBoston is thrilled that Matt will continue as a Board member and an active participant in all that we do.

Hillary is WalkBoston’s first ever Board AND Staff hero. Starting at WalkBoston straight out of college, Hillary quickly grew from a part-time front-office staffer into the full-time, valued face of WalkBoston. Hillary’s good cheer, willingness to pitch in, and excellence in everything made her the WalkBoston go-to person. It was a loss for us when Hillary left for law school, but we recruited her back as a Board member. She once again delivered – always willing to help whenever we needed good ideas. Among her key contributions was serving as a wonderful newsletter editor. With Hillary’s recent move to Burlington VT, we are losing her as an everyday member of the WalkBoston community, but we can bet she will be advocating for walking in her new hometown.

Keynote Speaker Jeff Speck | Walkable City author, TED speaker
Jeff Speck is a city planner and urban designer who, through writing, lectures, and built work, advocates internationally for more walkable cities. As Director of Design at the National Endowment for the Arts from 2003 through 2007, he oversaw the Mayors’ Institute on City Design and created the Governors’ Institute on Community Design, a federal program that helps state governors fight suburban sprawl. Prior to joining the Endowment, Mr. Speck spent ten years as Director of Town Planning at Duany Plater-Zyberk and Co., a leading practitioner of the New Urbanism, where he led or managed more than forty of the firm’s projects. He is the co-author of Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream as well as The Smart Growth Manual. His recent book, Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time – which the Christian Science Monitor called “timely and important, a delightful, insightful, irreverent work” – was the best-selling planning/design title of 2013 – 2015. http://www.jeffspeck.com/