walkboston

Help us keep up the momentum for road safety legislation – contact your state rep/senator today

Last Friday was the deadline for the MA State Legislature to file legislation for the 2021-2022 session. Many important pieces of traffic safety legislation were filed. Will you help us keep the momentum going by asking your legislator to cosponsor important Vision Zero legislation?

This Friday, February 26th is the first deadline for legislators to cosponsor, and we need your help to ensure these bills have as many cosponsors as possible. Send an email to your state legislators (see script provided below). Be sure to cc info@visionzerocoalition.org so we can track which legislators have been contacted.

Learn more about all of the MA Vision Zero Coalition’s policy priorities here.

Thank you for taking action with us! Together we can make Massachusetts streets safer.

Massachusetts Vision Zero Coalition
http://www.visionzerocoalition.org

SAMPLE SCRIPT FOR EMAIL OR PHONE CALL

To: Your State Senator and Representative (if you don’t know who they are, click here)

CC: info@visionzerocoalition.org

Recommended email subject: Please co-sponsor traffic safety bills

Sample script:

Dear [your legislator],

I am writing to ask for your support on three bills the MA Vision Zero Coalition is advocating for that would make our roads safer and prevent traffic deaths: An Act to reduce traffic fatalities, An Act relative to automated enforcement, and An Act relative to work and family mobility.

[Talk about why this issue matters to you: how you get around the city, how you or someone you know has been impacted by a crash, etc]

An Act to reduce traffic fatalities (HD1888) is an improved version of the bill that was passed by the Senate last session. This omnibus bill would require additional mirrors, side guards, and backup cameras for certain trucks and other large vehicles, define vulnerable road users and set a safe passing distance at certain speeds, allow the default speed limit on state-owned roads to be lowered to to 25 mph, and create a standardized crash report form for people walking and biking. This bill in particular includes important truck safety regulations and and maintains the current law requiring a person biking to use either a rear red light or reflector, instead of adding a requirement to use both a rear red light and a rear reflector; the latter has been proven to lead to racial profiling in other states.

An Act relative to automated enforcement (SD1962/HD3705 and HD2452), which the Senate came very close to passing last session, would allow municipalities to opt in to installing cameras that would issue tickets for violations for speeding, failure to stop at a red light, failure to stop at a school bus stop arm, blocking the box, and parking or driving in a dedicated bus lane. When enacted in other states, automated enforcement has reduced speeding and serious crashes. More than 400 communities in the U.S. use red light cameras, and more than 130 use cameras to enforce speed laws.

An Act relative to work and family mobility during and subsequent to the COVID-19 emergency (SD273/HD448), which has been filed in previous sessions, would allow undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses, which, in addition to improving equity, has proven to increase safety in other states.

Can we count on you to cosponsor these bills this session?

Thank you for your consideration.

[full name
street address
city/town, state, zip
phone:
email: ]

Statewide Fatal Crashes in MA, January 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 year 2020 in review. In this post, we’ll look at crashes in MA in January 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 20 fatal crashes in Massachusetts in January in the MassDOT Crash portal, 5 were people walking.
3 of those 5 crashes were hit & runs.
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 only identified in 1 of the 5 crashes in news articles.

Date	1/2/2021, 11:00 PM
Location	200 Locust St.
Town	Springfield
Type	PEDESTRIAN
Age
Sex	M

An unidentified man was killed in a hit and run crash on Locust Street in Springfield. There have been no follow up articles that we’ve seen identifying the person who died, or anything about the person that fled the scene. WesternMassNews says the Police Department has located the car and vehicle owner, and expects more from the District Attorney’s office.

Date	1/5/2021, 11:30 AM
Location	Chelsea St. + 13th St.
Town	Boston
Type	PEDESTRIAN
Age	92
Sex	M

Francis McGrath, a 92 year old man, was killed in a hit and run crash on Chelsea Street in Charlestown. The driver dragged him for nearly a mile. The crash location is listed as Chelsea St & 13th (entrance to the Charlestown Navy Yard), while StreetsblogMass reports the Boston Police said it happened even further back at Chelsea St & Terminal St. While there had been speculation that the driver of a large truck was involved, there have been no follow up articles that we’ve seen about the person that left the scene. We spoke to the Boston Herald about the safety issues large vehicles present for people walking/biking, and the increase of drivers speeding during the coronavirus pandemic.

Date	1/13/2021, 7:19 PM
Location	235 Main St.
Town	Oxford
Type	PEDESTRIAN
Age	55
Sex	F

Wendy Hibbard was crossing Main Street in Oxford when a driver hit and killed her. Based on Google Maps Street View, a crosswalk across Main Street was made ADA-compliant sometime between October 2018 and October 2019. The street is one lane in each direction with a sidewalk on each side, but it looks to be approximately 50 feet from curb to curb using the measuring tool on Google Maps. According to the MassDOT Road Inventory, Main Street/Rt12 is under MassDOT jurisdiction.

Date	1/19/2021, 9:30 PM
Location	38 Upland Rd.
Town	Belmont
Type	PEDESTRIAN
Age	35
Sex	M

District Attorney Marian T. Ryan’s office shared on January 25th that Dean Kapsalis, 54 of Hudson, will face additional charges of murder and leaving the scene causing death in connection with striking and killing Henry Tapia on Upland Road in Belmont. Kapsalis was previously arraigned on charges of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, a civil rights violation causing injury and leaving the scene causing injury. The Boston Globe reported that “since getting a driver’s license around 1987, Kapsalis has been cited for speeding at least 17 times, was involved in at least 7 surcharge crashes, and had his right to drive suspended at least 6 times, usually for a cluster of traffic violations in a short period of time, according to RMV records.”

Date	1/23/2021, 8:42 PM
Location	687 Ocean St.
Town	Marshfield
Type	PEDESTRIAN
Age	56
Sex	M

An unidentified 56 year old Marshfield man was hit and killed on Ocean Street in Marshfield. An article from 95.9 WATD quotes a police lieutenant that the “early investigation shows the victim was walking in the roadway along a dark stretch.” The street is one lane in each direction, but there is only a sidewalk on one side of the street.

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.

Walk on State Street? Public Works wants to make it safer. Make sure to weigh in!

In January 2020, Boston’s Public Works Department announced they would be taking a look at State Street in downtown Boston for major upgrades. This effort builds on previous planning projects and initiatives that the City of Boston has rolled out over the last few years: GoBoston 2030, Vision Zero, Complete Streets guidelines, and Connect Historic Boston. As the Boston Globe’s Adam Vaccaro put it at the time:

[O]fficials say there’s one primary goal: to make State Street much better for walking. That’s not just a matter of urban idealism: State Street is overwhelmingly used by pedestrians, with more than 29,000 each day compared with about 10,700 cars and trucks.

Everyone can agree there has long been a need to expand the narrow/uneven sidewalks, which especially during lunchtime can be wholly inadequate.

However, there is also a need to make the street easier to cross. In November 2019, a driver struck a 86-year old woman just after the morning rush hour; the woman suffered life-threatening injuries.

One-way streets with multiple lanes of vehicle traffic are inherently dangerous for people walking. When a driver stops for a pedestrian to let them cross at an unsignalized crosswalk, a driver in the second lane may not see the person trying to walk across the street, resulting in a dangerous scenario called the “double threat.”

Over the last year, the Public Works team steadily moved the project along using pre-COVID-19 traffic and parking data for modeling. They convened a group to meet with their team remotely each month throughout the summer to discuss and react to options for this stretch of street that connects the Rose Kennedy Greenway to the Old State House.

In the fall, State Street became one of the locations for a “Healthy Streets” pilot project, in which cones were deployed to create temporary wider-sidewalks and a bike lane to allow for social distancing. It is great that the Transportation and Public Works departments collaborated to test concepts here for a future redesign.

In October, Boston’s Public Works Department (PWD) presented four design options for long-term improvements to State Street. (You can see a PDF of the presentation here, watch a narrated video of the presentation here, and fill out the survey here.)

The Public Works Department is responding to the need to make streets safer for pedestrians, and they need to hear from you now!

The project status is listed as “in design,” and a design survey is currently open. We highly encourage you to weigh in on making this a street that is safer for people walking. More sidewalk space, a protected bike lane, and space for loading zones means less exposure to moving vehicle traffic for people walking, resulting in safer street crossings. There has been pushback that reducing space for people driving is a bad idea, with a claim that these plans are based on pandemic traffic volumes. However, data that informed the concepts are pre-pandemic, as the Public Works Department made clear in the presentations.

Here’s what you can do

Watch recorded project presentations on the Boston Public Works State Street Project Page
Fill out the survey, and let them know how the design will help you as a person walking
Contact City Councilor Ed Flynn (cc: Council President/soon-to-be acting Mayor Kim Janey, and streets officials/soon-to-be chief of staff Chris Osgood and Greg Rooney, and copy comments@dev.walkboston.org). Share the same feedback you include in the survey to ensure they hear your message. Thank you!