walkboston

Golden Shoe Award Winners For March 2019 Annual Meeting

As presented at this year’s annual event on March 18, 2019

Fall River Walking Champions
Friends of the Quequechan River Rail Trail: Janice Velozo and many others; Bike Fall River: Al Lima and many others; Partners for a Healthier Community: David Weed, Marcia Picard; Fall River School Dept.: Letourneau School Vice Principal, David Assad, Fonseca School Principal, Alicia Lisi; Fall River Dept. of Community Maintenance: John Perry, Laura Ferreira and others; Fall River Dept. of Health and SSTAR, Mass in Motion and 1422: Julianne Kelly, Eric Andrade, and Paula Beaulieu; Fall River City Planners and Engineers: Bill Roth; Fall River Police Dept: Officer Rick Saraiva; Fall River Fire Dept: Chief John Lynch; Southeastern Regional Planning and Economic Development District (SRPEDD): Jackie Jones

This diverse group of people and organizations from across Fall River have joined forces to create wonderful new walking opportunities and establish a base of activists who will ensure that Fall River is even more walkable in the years to come. A long-anticipated dream of residents to reconnect a City split by the building of Interstate 195 was realized with the planning and construction of the beautiful and well-loved Quequechan River Rail Trail (QRRT). It was then determined that a collaboration of City departments and volunteers was essential to promote, protect, and preserve the Trail.

Since 2016, the Friends of the Quequechan Trail have conducted clean- ups, maintained gardens, placed wayfinding signs, and organized events to keep the Trail a welcoming and safe resource for all residents and visitors to the City. In other locations around the City, all ages got involved: senior champions led walks around senior centers and worked to secure improvements for sidewalks and crosswalks, and a Safe Routes to School grant was awarded to protect the youngest pedestrians. Resident activists led the passage of the Community Preservation Act, and partnered with city staff for the adoption of a Complete Streets Policy.

Springfield Walking Champions
City of Springfield Dept. of Health and Human Services: Helen Caulton-Harris, Commissioner; Benjamin Bland, Mass in Motion Coordinator; Kiah McAndrew-Davis, 1422 Grant Manager; City of Springfield Dept. of Public Works: Matt Sokop, Chief Engineer; Pioneer Valley Planning Commission, Catherine Ratté; LiveWell Springfield, Jessica Collins; Wayfinders, Beatrice Dewberry; WalkBike Springfield, Betsy Johnson

This persistent, resourceful, and courageous group of walking champions shows the power of layering the efforts of local advocates, public health professionals, and city staff with resources from regional and state agencies. Their dedication to improving Springfield’s walking environment has resulted in real changes to the built environment stretching across the City. These changes took time and could not have happened without true, undying commitment.
Policies now exist to sustain these efforts – a crosswalk standard, a pedestrian safety curriculum for elementary students, and a complete streets policy that looks to expand the biking and walking network in Springfield. The work of these champions has led to more students walking to school along safer routes, and neighborhood residents crossing streets in brightly painted, prominent crosswalks.

Keynote Speaker Eric Fleegler, MD, MPH | Boston Children’s Hospital
Pediatric emergency physician, Health resources researcher

Dr. Fleegler is a legend at Boston Children’s Hospital. For over 14 years, he has led injury prevention research, with a focus on violence and firearm fatalities. Dr. Fleegler has also researched pedestrian safety as a public health priority and will discuss ways to engage the health care community in the effort to make local streets safer. He has published over 30 original research articles in numerous periodicals, including JAMA Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, and the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Dr. Fleegler founded and directed HelpSteps, a web- and mobile-based system that improves families’ access to social services. HelpSteps is now the referral system for the Boston Public Health Commission. Dr. Fleegler also co-founded TriVox Health, an online system to manage patients with chronic diseases, including ADHD, asthma, autism, depression, anxiety, and epilepsy. TriVox Health is currently used by 10 clinics at Boston Children’s Hospital and other medical institutions.

Dr. Fleegler majored in political science at Brown University. He earned his medical degree at the University of Pennsylvania and his Master in Public Health at the Harvard School of Public Health.

One minute, one slide: March 2019 Presentations

Below are the “One Minute, One Slide” presentations shared by members of the WalkBoston staff at the March 18, 2019 Annual Celebration.

Joey Santana – Introduction

Adi Nochur – Age-Friendly Walking in Boston and beyond

Dorothea Hass – Safe Walking for Healthy and Connected Lives

Brendan Kearney – Language defines a story

Stacey Beuttell – Walkable school campuses

Bob Sloane – I-90: #UnchokeTheThroat was just the beginning

One Minute, One Slide: I-90: #UnchokeTheThroat was just the beginning

Below is a “One Minute, One Slide” presentation shared by a member of the WalkBoston staff.
Text provided is as prepared for this year’s annual event on March 18, 2019.

Bob Sloane

Unchoke the Throat was just the beginning! It turns out that it was getting a tiger by the tail, and now we’ve found that the tiger has more than one tail, and we have to catch them all! The I-90 project stretches a mile in each direction – most recognizably from the BU Bridge to the River St. Bridge.

It involves making a new interchange for I-90 and several miles of public street to access the 100 acre development parcel surrounding the roads. It involves pedestrian access to a major transit station – West Station – from all directions, along with several off-road paths – the most well-known now being the ones through the throat.

The paths through the throat are now going to be two separate paths – one for peds and one for bikes – thanks to our Unchoke the Throat effort. The paths are in place in all current options.

Turn to Page 17 of your hymnals to see where we are right now.

There are still 2 options for the Throat being worked on. Neither has a very good riverside park, and both involve terminating the use of the riverside path – the Paul Dudley White – for up to 10 years (!) – and diverting walkers and riders
to Cambridge. We’re working on that – we hope to have a temporary boardwalk out in the river through the Throat so that the paths will still work for all of us and we are working on a better park along the river’s edge.

To learn more, check out our project page.

One Minute, One Slide: Walkable School Campuses

Below is a “One Minute, One Slide” presentation shared by a member of the WalkBoston staff.
Text provided is as prepared for this year’s annual event on March 18, 2019.

Stacey Beuttell

Belmont, Arlington, Springfield, Somerville, Lexington, Brookline, Lowell – these are just a few of the cities and towns building new elementary, middle or high schools right now. With the construction of so many new schools in Massachusetts, WalkBoston is busy working to ensure that the students walking to school have a voice.

It’s tough because there has been a dramatic increase in driving children to school. And those drivers are loud! In 1969, almost half of kindergarten through eighth grade students walked or biked to school. In 2009, it was down to 13%.

And school campuses are being designed to accommodate these cars rather than dedicating that space to places where our kids can learn and grow.

WalkBoston is working to make school campuses more walkable. And that doesn’t mean just adding sidewalks! A walkable campus considers the needs of walkers first when organizing the movement of people, bikes, buses and cars on the school grounds.

Walking rarely enters the conversation when new schools are planned. And that needs to change. It’s time to design our schools’ front yards for our kids to run in circles, rather than for our cars to drive in them.

One Minute, One Slide: Language defines a story

Below is a “One Minute, One Slide” presentation shared by a member of the WalkBoston staff.
Text provided is as prepared for this year’s annual event on March 18, 2019.

Brendan Kearney

Language matters when talking about crashes: A recent study shared at the TRB (Transportation Research Board) Conference titled “Editorial Patterns in Bicyclist and Pedestrian Crash Reporting” examined ways that media coverage of crashes could influence public perception, looking at word choice and agency.

An example from a crash in Boston: You wouldn’t know someone was driving this truck by the initial news report, since “a city-owned truck struck a pedestrian.”

We (politely) reached out to the reporter and station on Twitter, and asked them to clarify that a person driving was behind the wheel in this crash. The news station was responsive, & made changes to the story.

Just as road design influences behavior, media coverage & local reporting influences public perception.

About 40,000 people in the United States die as a result of car crashes each year. This isn’t just about drivers hitting people walking, it includes people both in and outside cars – roughly 350 people die in crashes each year in Massachusetts alone, while many thousands more are injured. We need to reduce illegal speeding to help prevent and/or reduce the severity of these crashes. So a big THANK YOU to all the reporters and news organizations that are willing to take a look at how they are presenting crashes. Local reporting helps shine a light on common-sense ways we can make our streets safer for people: fixing the way our roads are designed.