walkboston

How to tune in to the annual meeting

Missed the event? You can watch the recording here.

Today’s the day! The WalkBoston 31st Annual Celebration is tonight, 3/24 at 5pm ET.

Our board had pledged to match $5,000 worth of donations from tonight’s event (both donations made through Eventbrite RSVPs & this GoFundMe page this evening). If you’re tweeting about the event, tag us @walkboston and use the hashtag #WalkBoston31st

Our 2020 Annual Report was released in conjunction with our 31st Annual Meeting on March 24, 2021. Click the cover to read the report.

How to tune in:

Sign up on Eventbrite! If you RSVP’d on Eventbrite prior to this week, an email went out Monday night with the Zoom link.
Registered more recently? The Zoom link was included in your confirmation email. If you can’t find that email, two more automated Eventbrite reminders with the Zoom link will go out this afternoon: 2 hours before & 10 minutes before the event starts.
Not sure if you registered? If you are logged in to Eventbrite, this online event page will include the Zoom link.
Not able to make it? A recording of the event will be available after the event.

Golden Shoes will be awarded to:

Karen Cord Taylor – longtime WalkBoston board member
MassDOT Shared Streets and Spaces Program (with special recognition to the Barr Foundation and Solomon Foundation)
Frank Caro (in memoriam) – Board member Anita Johnson shared how Frank helped make walking better for everyone in Brookline.

Our panelists:

Tracy A. Corley, PhD – Director of Research and Partnerships at the Conservation Law Foundation
Mike McGinn – Executive Director at America Walks
Jodie Medeiros – Executive Director at Walk San Francisco
Alexander Train, AICP – Director, Department of Housing and Community Development for the City of Chelsea

We’re rolling out a “Thank You” effort, and want you to take part!

Contact your local elected officials & public works/planning staff. Let them know you like the creative use of public space shown possible through the MassDOT “Shared Streets & Spaces” and “Shared Winter Streets & Places” programs (that you’ll hear more about during the event), and that you want to see more! You can see a full list of projects funded on this page, along with project descriptions.
Copy us on your message: comments@dev.walkboston.org
Not sure what to say? You can keep it simple:

Thank you, _____, for [insert the part of the project description in your city/town that you like].
I really like these programs and want to see continued creative use of street space and a focus on walking safety with MassDOT funding support.
Thanks, Your name & address

Golden Shoe in memoriam: Frank Caro

Frank Caro will be honored with a Golden Shoe in memoriam on Wednesday night at the WalkBoston Annual Meeting. See the Eventbrite page for more info.

Frank Caro, who died suddenly in October, was a strong, dogged advocate for safe and pleasant city walking. After his retirement as a Professor of Gerontology at the University of Massachusetts, he turned his attention to making Brookline a better place for senior living; he was instrumental in making Brookline the first Age-Friendly City in New England and in co-founding the Brookline Community Aging Network (BrooklineCAN).

He believed that benches along Brookline’s major streets would assist seniors enormously in their desire to be walkers, and he convinced the Commissioner of Public Works to install a significant number of benches along Beacon St., Brookline’s major thoroughfare, as well as several other Town locations (though these attractive benches are used by people of all ages).

He was the lead advocate for and first chair of the Brookline Pedestrian Advisory Committee, an official Town Committee that studies pedestrian issues and makes recommendations to the Town Transportation Board.

He advocated for proper snow removal from sidewalks, including at corners where snow plows traditionally left piles of snow and ice for pedestrians to treacherously climb over, a campaign that has been highly successful. He led a small volunteer group to check sidewalk snow removal in commercial areas after every snowfall.

He bemoaned and reported obstructions on the sidewalks such as overgrown foliage and heaved pavement slabs, believing that pedestrians have the right to easy, safe pathways throughout the sidewalks.

His observations of several walk signal problems provided the impetus for a major Pedestrian Advisory Committee study of essentially all walk signals in Brookline. The recommendations from that study have resulted in the Town applying for a grant to cover the costs of retrofitting the walk signals to comply with the ADA. He also began documenting problematic crosswalks, some difficult to see by the vision-impaired and others mis-located.

He identified and documented the issue of poor pedestrian street lighting. Most of the street lighting in the Town was designed to illuminate automobile traffic lanes, not the sidewalks, with the high light placement casting street tree shadows on the sidewalks. He convinced the Town to create a committee to study the problem and make recommendations.

Finally, he was the President of Friends of Hall’s Pond, an organization that cares for and enhances this small, wilderness sanctuary in the heart of Brookline, a magical natural place for pedestrians to linger and savor.

All of these issues require dogged attention to detail upon detail upon detail, which Frank undertook wholeheartedly, in his love of real city life, the life of the walker.

Anita Johnson, WalkBoston Board Member

Statewide Fatal Crashes in MA, February 2021

Each month in 2021, we plan to post about the fatal crashes in Massachusetts from the previous month, and share any trends that we see. Last month, we took a look at the 5 fatal crashes listed in the MassDOT Crash Portal in January. In this post, we’ll look at crashes in MA in February 2021. The information in the chart below is compiled from news reports, and was checked against the MassDOT Crash Portal Dashboard “Fatal Information by Year.” The Google Street View images included below use the address listed in the crash portal.

Of the 19 fatal crashes in Massachusetts in February in the MassDOT Crash portal, 4 were people walking.
3 of those 4 crashes were on limited access highways. In 2 of those crashes, tractor trailer drivers struck and killed a driver who exited a vehicle after it had broken down.
The crash portal does not include names. The names of 2 of the people walking who died have not been made public yet.
The name of the person driving was not identified in any of the 4 crashes in news articles.
2 people lost their lives at a construction site in Boston in February when a co-worker hit them with a vehicle, pushing them into an open trench. That incident is not listed in the MassDOT Crash Portal. The Boston Globe wrote at least two follow up stories about 33-year-old Jose Carlos Figueroa-Gutierrez and 27-year-old Jordan Romero: “One day later, makeshift memorial for two construction workers only sign of tragedy in Boston,” “A sister mourns for brother killed at downtown Boston construction site.”

Date	2/2/2021, 11:30 PM
Location	I-90 EAST, MM 87.0
Town	Oxford
Type	PEDESTRIAN
Age	33
Sex	M

A 33 year old Hartford man was struck and killed on on I-90 (the MassPike) by the driver of a tractor trailer. WHDH reported that he was hit after his Toyota Camry broke down and he got out of the car to examine the problem.

Date	2/8/2021, 5:55 PM
Location	418 Winthrop Ave.
Town	Lawrence
Type	PEDESTRIAN
Age	70
Sex	F

A 70 year old woman was hit and killed on Winthrop Ave (Rt 114) on the North Andover / Lawrence line. The Boston Globe reported that the scene of the crash on Route 114 was near the North Andover Mall. Rt 114 is 4 lanes (2 travel lanes each direction) in front of the North Andover Mall and 3 lanes after the driveway intersection. There is only a sidewalk on one side of the street. According to the MassDOT Road Inventory, Winthrop Ave/Rt 114 is under MassDOT jurisdiction.

According to Google Streetview, the sidewalk is relatively new and under construction as of November 2019. There is only a sidewalk on one side of the street, but it did not exist prior to November 2019. New curb ramps are in place but only go across the driveway entrance, not Rt 114. The nearest crosswalks across Rt 114 are 0.9 miles away from each other, with the shopping center roughly in between. A housing development is also on the other side of the street from the shopping center.

Date	2/13/2021, 5:55 AM
Location	I-90 EAST, MM 116.2
Town	Framingham
Type	PEDESTRIAN
Age	57
Sex	M

Mustapha Faddi, a 57 year old Marlborough man, was struck and killed on I-90 (the MassPike) by the driver of a tractor trailer. Mustapha’s Nissan Murano broke down and he got out of the car to examine the problem. The Patch shared that this was the second fatal crash on the MassPike in February involving a disable vehicle & tractor trailer.

Date	2/27/2021, 11:40 PM
Location	I-93 NORTH, south of EXIT 33
Town	Medford
Type	PEDESTRIAN
Age	22
Sex	F

Madeleine Fox, a 22 year old woman, was hit and killed after she got out of her friend’s car on I-93. NBC Boston reports that investigators are working to identify a description of the vehicle or vehicles that might have hit her.

Updates
If you have an update about a community member who was killed in one of these crashes, please contact Brendan so we can update our . WalkBoston has maintained a list each year since 2016, pulling the information from news reports, social media, and from people like you that share the information with us.
Yearly trackers: |||||

Reminder about the data from the MassDOT portal
DISCLAIMER: The compilation of data is based on preliminary data we receive from a variety of local sources. Some of the data may differ slightly from information provided by NHTSA as this dashboard does not use imputation methods. Information is subject to change when/if updated information becomes available. Data updated daily as reported by police departments.

Boston.com: “Should the city remove snow from sidewalks, just like it does for Boston’s streets?”

Brendan Kearney, deputy director of WalkBoston, an advocacy organization aimed at making walking easier and safer in Massachusetts, told officials Cambridge has taken up efforts, as have Newton and Framingham to varying degrees. “There are definitely examples here in Massachusetts as well,” Kearney said.
…
Representatives from WalkBoston and the LiveableStreets Alliance — which advocates for safe streets — advised Boston councilors to consider areas to prioritize snow clearing based on community input, and to include sidewalk plowing and direction on where to leave snow piles as part of its snow plow contracts, among other recommendations.
“I’m just super impressed by what Syracuse is doing,” Kearney said. “That is a great, great model for Boston.”

Posted March 18, 2021

View the presentation we shared with the city council:

How to tune in:

Golden Shoes will be awarded to:

Our panelists:

We’re rolling out a “Thank You” effort, and want you to take part!

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Annual Meeting