Tag: Boston Globe

Boston Globe – “Some city councilors want a 20 mph speed limit in Boston”

Boston Globe – “Some city councilors want a 20 mph speed limit in Boston”

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Boston Globe: “Some city councilors want a 20 mph speed limit in Boston”

Even supporters of a change to 20 miles per hour argue a speed limit change is not by itself enough to protect pedestrians. Cities and towns must also design streets to encourage slower driving, said Wendy Landman, executive director of the pedestrian advocacy group WalkBoston.

“Simply changing the speed limit without doing anything about the built environment does a little, but not nearly enough,” she said.

Bike lanes, raised crosswalks, streetside landscaping, and thinner travel lanes are among the traffic-calming measures that actually influence drivers to go slower, Landman said.

Posted August 28, 2018

Boston Globe – Chain-reaction crash that killed toddler in South Boston leaves residents reeling

Boston Globe – Chain-reaction crash that killed toddler in South Boston leaves residents reeling

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Boston Globe: “Chain-reaction crash that killed toddler in South Boston leaves residents reeling”

[Six] pedestrians including the toddler in South Boston, have been struck and killed in Boston this year, according to WalkBoston, a pedestrian advocacy group that uses news reports to track such crashes.

Wendy Landman, the group’s executive director, said people pushing strollers are “certainly are one of the groups we think about when we think of sidewalk accessibility.”

Posted July 27, 2018

WalkBoston’s statewide crash tracker can be accessed on this page under “Crash Monitoring”

Boston Globe – To MassDOT: Tear down this wall

Boston Globe – To MassDOT: Tear down this wall

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Boston Globe: “To MassDOT: Tear down this wall”
by Renee Loth

The area under and just east of the viaduct is known as “the throat,” because of the way it is squeezed between the river, rail yards, and Soldiers Field Road. Transportation advocates have been pressing MassDOT to see the billion-dollar Pike redesign project as an opportunity to “unchoke the throat” by widening pedestrian and bicycle paths, adding a landscaped buffer from traffic, improving public transit connections, and knitting together the south side of Allston with the burgeoning new enterprise campus Harvard University is building to the north.

At a recent public forum sponsored by the Charles River Conservancy and WalkBoston that I helped moderate, landscape architecture firms, Harvard’s planning department, and the business-backed group A Better City presented inventive ideas to widen the throat, perhaps with an elevated boardwalk extending over the river. (It can be done: The Watertown firm Sasaki is the same team that designed the award-winning Chicago Riverwalk using a similar boardwalk approach, and Philadelphia has extended a 2,000-foot boardwalk along a crowded section of the Schuylkill River.)

Un-choking the throat doesn’t require that the viaduct be removed and the Pike re-routed at grade, but doing so would be vastly better for river access, and, advocates say, cost about $100 million less than reconstructing the viaduct.

Posted April 23, 2018

WalkBoston gets a new board president

WalkBoston gets a new board president

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Boston Globe: “Bold Types: WalkBoston gets a new board president”

Emma Rothfeld Yashar has been elected board president at the nonprofit pedestrian advocacy group WalkBoston. She is a real estate associate at DLA Piper, where she focuses on development, acquisition, and financing of commercial real estate, with an emphasis on land use and project permits in Greater Boston.

WalkBoston focuses on making communities more walkable, improving pedestrian safety, and promoting a cleaner environment.

“I’m a firm believer that if you design public spaces in a way that makes people feel safe and welcome, and in a way that’s walkable, everything else for healthy business and transportation falls in line,” she said in a statement.

Yashar has been the group’s development committee chair since 2014 and the board secretary since 2012.

Posted April 17, 2018

#ClearCurbCuts Letter to the Globe

#ClearCurbCuts Letter to the Globe

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To highlight challenges pedestrians face daily, WalkBoston produced a short video showcasing Amy Corcoran Hunt, who uses a wheelchair, navigating curb cuts 5 days after a snowstorm. In just 3 blocks Amy encountered 6 impassable curb cuts. The video was posted on Twitter and Facebook and viewed 55,000 times. WBUR then interviewed Amy, Channel 5/WCVB did a piece on the video, and the South End News featured it on its front cover. A letter to the editor by WalkBoston Board member Carol Steinberg followed:

During these snowy, icy days, we want to remind everybody to keep curb cuts completely cleared at all times so that wheelchair users are able to cross the streets like everybody else. I have often rolled to the end of a shoveled sidewalk, only to find the curb cut blocked with snow.

When my path is blocked and I stop, looking desperate, kind strangers will sometimes attempt to hoist my power wheelchair over the piles or stop traffic to help me cross at a driveway. We certainly cannot rely on the kindness, availability, and possible muscle power of strangers.

We must handle the snow so that everybody can get around.

Excerpt of Boston Globe letter 1/12/2018 WalkBoston Board member Carol Steinberg

This article was featured in WalkBoston’s March 2018 newsletter.
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