We mail out copies of our printed newsletter two times a year to supporters, state & local officials; if you’d like to receive a copy, or have an idea for an article, please let us know! See past newsletters here
Registration or info for other events and public meetings can be found at walkboston.org/events
31st Annual Celebration Wed, March 24, 2021 Zoom: 5-6:30PM
Join our virtual Annual Celebration highlighting achievements in walkability and honoring the contributions of the wonderful individuals, board members, and organizations who support us and make our work possible.
Hear a panel discuss how to maintain the momentum of walking advocacy post COVID-19, and lift up efforts in the quest for transportation justice statewide. A brief Q&A will follow. Learn more
We mail out copies of our printed newsletter 3-4 times a year to supporters, state & local officials; with our new website, these articles are also added as individual posts to be shared online (see previous newsletters). We’re looking for a new volunteer newsletter editor to help!
What’s it take to be a newsletter editor?
The role of newslettereditor involves more coordinating than editing. Here is the current lifecycle of a newsletter, from inspiration to a supporter’s mailbox:
A WalkBoston newsletter starts with a brainstorming session at the Communications Committee (we meet after work on the first Thursday of the month). Together with the editor, the Committee picks a topic and often creates a list of potential authors. Armed with that information, the editor drafts emails to each author inviting them to participate and explaining logistics. Each edition has 2-4 stories.
After each author agrees to participate, the newslettereditor is responsible for checking in with authors and getting final drafts. With last drafts in hand, the editor does a preliminary review for content and word count. Once the articles are a reasonable length and flow together in an interesting way, the editor passes a word document with all articles included on to WalkBoston board member Nina Garfinkle at Garfinkle Design.
You’re not all on your own as an editor! Nina drops all the articles into the WalkBoston newsletter branded format and circulates the newsletter to you and our crack editing team from the Communications Committee. This team does all the detailed line editing and helps us create a perfect product. Nina inputs each edit directly from the group into the formatted draft. Once the newsletter is as clean as possible, Nina sends the draft to WalkBoston’s staff for final edits and information on upcoming events.
When this is complete, the office runs a mailing list and the newsletter is out the door! Brendan converts the articles to posts for the website so they go live a week or so after the newsletter hits mailboxes, making sure the articles receive additional visibility.
As you can see, this is not a job that requires spectacular editing skills as much as it needs organization, communication and an interest in putting out exciting newsletters that help spread the WalkBoston mission. Interested? Questions? Ideas? Get in touch!
Communication Committee Members: Nina Garfinkle, Communications Chair Hillary Borcherding, outgoing NewsletterEditor (who is helping with the transition, but stepping down as she has recently moved to Vermont!) Joyce DiBona Don Eunson Shay Karime Brendan Kearney, WalkBoston staff Ken Krause
Joseph Cutrufo is a former member of the WalkBoston staff and current Director of Communications and Connecticut Policy at Tri-State Transportation Campaign.
In March 2015, Connecticut cut the ribbon on CTfastrak, New England’s first bus rapid transit system. CTfastrak features a 9.4-mile bus-only guideway which runs from downtown New Britain through Newington and West Hartford to its terminus in downtown Hartford.
CTfastrak has outpaced ridership projections so far. But the real test for CTfastrak will be whether it can transform the way people travel in greater Hartford, where 81 percent of commuters drive to work alone — even higher than the national average of 76 percent.
Not long after the system launched, prospective riders bemoaned the lack of parking near stations. Predictably, the Connecticut Department of Transportation responded by building more parking.
But when people won’t use the system due to a lack of parking, we shouldn’t ask, “Where can we build more parking.” We should ask, “Why can’t people get here without a car?” In greater Hartford, the answer is simple: the neighborhoods surrounding CTfastrak stations aren’t dense enough, and the streets in station areas don’t safely accommodate walking.
Some in the CTfastrak corridor recognize these challenges. The City of New Britain hired a consultant to run a series of public workshops to identify what kind of developments would be most appropriate for the city’s three CTfastrak stations. And in West Hartford, town officials amended local zoning regulations to allow mixed-used development around CTfastrak stations, where much of the land is currently zoned for industrial uses.
But in suburban Newington, the town’s zoning board passed a moratorium on “high density development” shortly after CTfastrak service launched.
Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy has set aside funds to help speed along transit-oriented development projects, but ultimately the region needs a more holistic approach to making greater Hartford a more walkable region. The state had a chance to start the process through legislation in 2015, but a bill proposing a “Transit Corridor Development Authority” was viewed unfavorably by towns that saw it as a threat to home rule.
That won’t be the end of the movement to unchain the greater Hartford area from car-dominant planning. One place to look for inspiration is the city of Hartford, where a major zoning overhaul seeks to undo a half-century in which the city’s parking inventory increased by 30,000 as the population declined by 40,000 people.
This article was featured in WalkBoston’s Winter 2017 newsletter.
Tom Palmer covered transportation and real estate development for 15 of his 32 years as a reporter and editor at the Boston Globe. He now owns Tom Palmer Communication, a consulting firm.
I’m a newcomer to Boston. I’ve only been here 40 years. The city has changed a lot in that time, but one thing hasn’t changed. It’s still a walkable city. My friends from the Midwest, and even some who visit from bigger cities closer to us, are invariably pleasantly surprised at how accessible and manageable it is. “I love Boston, because you can walk across town in 45 minutes,” a visitor told me.
There’s a lot of room for improvement, of course. Our walk/don’t walk/take-your-life-in-your-hands lights could be better. Pedestrians could shape up by paying attention to lights, but the streets are often so narrow it’s often tempting to make a run for it.
Another thing that hasn’t changed in my short time living in the Boston area is the price of housing. The front pages of newspapers in the 1970s lamented the high rents and home prices of the day, just like we do now. And today it’s even less affordable.
Even some Boston folks who arrived more recently than I object to the fact that Boston is growing so much, that it’s so much more congested than it was. We are lucky we have the attractions and resources – educational, business, medical, sports, cultural, entertainment – that make people want to come here and stay. In the years since Boston shook off its post-War slump and reinvented itself for the 21st century, we gradually and collectively chose to be a contemporary world-class city – competing for business and talent globally and growing to enable us to do that. As engaging as historical Old Boston was, and while we will preserve much of it, we elected not to remain a provincial, insulated community.
With that choice came the responsibility to overcome the barriers to increasing our housing supply, to accepting density. We’ve taken some steps in that direction, adding thousands of apartments just since the recent recession. Boston was at its most dense at mid-20th century, but the automobile did not yet dominate like it does in today’s car culture. People walked more and took public transportation more. The population then declined and only began growing again in about 1990. If we are going to accommodate continually increasing numbers of fellow residents of the Boston area, we must adjust our ways so we can all efficiently get where we need to go. A young professional woman I met the other day rides a fold-up electric scooter from her home in the Seaport to her job in the Back Bay, wearing a collapsible helmet that she found from a European manufacturer. We need more entrepreneurial commuters like that.
But most people in the city are going to walk at least a portion of their daily trips. Walking is healthy and social. As a counterpart, a big part of the solution to our overcrowded highways and streets is expanding our transit capacity. That means both fixing our ill-maintained existing MBTA system and eventually adding to the network. A good transit system enables and encourages walking.
Our continued economic development and our quality of life depend on it.
by Nicholas Bulens, Grant Writer & Researcher, Town of Weymouth
In the summer of 2014, WalkBoston partnered with the Town of Weymouth to open a conversation between municipal staff and older adults about creating a safer, more attractive walking environment. The Safe Routes for Seniors initiative was a true convergence of advocacy and policy, resulting in a set of design guidelines and program alternatives to better coordinate the town’s capital planning process with greater walkability. The initiative has helped springboard Weymouth toward a healthier approach to community design.
Weymouth is a mature suburban community situated about 12 miles southeast of Boston. The town has a strong residential character with many attributes of a walkable environment. Weymouth has four village centers, each featuring a mix of land uses that helps create a sense of place for residents. It also has a diverse open space network interspersed among many settled neighborhoods. There is also a good mix of transit services, including commuter rail and bus, which help connect Weymouth’s people and places. However, in spite of these attributes, the town has grown increasingly dependent on the automobile for transportation in the last 50 years. Simultaneously, Weymouth’s population has aged and diversified to where almost one in every four residents is over age 60.
Recognizing a need to analyze the built environment from a healthy aging perspective, Weymouth received a grant from the Massachusetts Council on Aging, in partnership with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health [MDPH], to conduct a senior pedestrian safety study. Municipal staff collected data on Weymouth’s housing, land use and pedestrian crashes. The data led the town to identify four areas of need where seniors could most benefit from improved walking conditions.
WalkBoston facilitated a public meeting between municipal staff and an audience of over 30 older adults. Residents raised important concerns about poorly maintained sidewalks, obstructed lines of sight and distressed crosswalks. WalkBoston then hit the streets with a diverse focus group of municipal staff, senior residents and local businesspeople. A wealth of observations were made, and ideas flowed freely between stakeholders.
Weymouth’s walkability investigation culminated in the publication of the Safe Routes for Seniors Design Guidelines and Planning Report. WalkBoston introduced municipal staff to new and innovative approaches to streetscape improvements, including “lighter quicker cheaper” placemaking, which could facilitate safer, more frequent foot traffic by older adults in the town’s target areas. Weymouth’s planning staff prepared the final report to summarize the initiative’s findings and recommend design guidelines for town planning moving forward.
The Safe Routes for Seniors initiative has already led Weymouth to take a number of steps toward enhancing walkability. For 2015, Weymouth’s Mayor Susan Kay has committed $150,000 to sidewalk improvements and indicated that she will budget up to $250,000 for the same purpose each year thereafter. Plans are also under way by municipal staff to develop a Complete Streets policy and apply for certification under the MassDOT’s new Complete Streets program. In addition, the town has received a technical assistance grant from the MDPH to develop a zoning action plan with the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission [PVPC], a leader in the movement to design healthier communities. The PVPC will advise Weymouth on how to facilitate healthy eating and more physical activity in the community through changes to local zoning provisions, such as reduced parking requirements and site plan review.
This article was featured in our Summer 2015 newsletter. See the full newsletter & past editions here.
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