Tag: Boston

Age-Friendly Walking – better walking for all ages

By Adi Nochur/Project Manager, WalkBoston

Age-Friendly Walking is an emerging framework to increase pedestrian safety for children and older adults. WalkBoston has spent many years working with children on Safe Routes to Schools efforts, and over the last two years we have focused on seniors through an Age-Friendly Walking initiative with Boston. In close collaboration with the City’s Elderly Commission and many other municipal agencies, community partners, and local residents, we are advancing safe and comfortable walking for Boston seniors – and by extension everyone!

With financial support from the Tufts Health Plan Foundation and the Mass Councils on Aging, we are working with three pilot neighborhoods in Boston – the South End, East Boston, and Mattapan Square – to identify key issues and concerns, and to implement street and sidewalk improvements that create safe and pleasant walking conditions for seniors. We are also using the lessons learned from these pilots to create guidelines for a long-term citywide approach to senior walking. Providing benches as places to rest and repairing unfilled and uneven tree pits to eliminate tripping hazards are among the top priorities we have identified (as well as sidewalk snow shoveling, of course). Thanks to our efforts, improving pedestrian safety is a key recommendation in the City’s Age-Friendly Boston Action Plan. We look forward to our continued partnership with city agencies and community partners to make a positive impact on these issues.

As elderly populations continue to grow across the state and country, the need for walkable communities increases. Walkability is key to ensuring that seniors can age in place, access important goods and services, remain socially active, and maintain physical and economic mobility. Working with low-income seniors and seniors of color has helped us incorporate equity into this work. We have learned that Age-Friendly Walking is a powerful frame to bring diverse stakeholders and new partners to the table.

We encourage your community to consider joining the global Age-Friendly Communities movement, with leadership from the World Health Organization and AARP. We also invite you to contact WalkBoston if you’re interested in starting an Age-Friendly Walking initiative in your community! Visit our page for more details on our Age-Friendly work to date.

This article was featured in WalkBoston’s March 2018 newsletter.
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Crosswalk Crisis: Dangerous Intersections in Boston

NBC10 Boston: “Crosswalk Crisis: Dangerous Intersections in Boston”

Two Boston high school students were hit by a car as they crossed the street at the intersection of Tremont Street and Malcolm X Boulevard in Roxbury on Tuesday. Safety advocates say the intersection is a hazard and that changes need to be made to make sure tragedy doesn’t happen again. NBC10 Boston Investigator Ally Donnelly has been tracking dangerous intersections across the city for months. She discovered there were at least 772 pedestrian crashes throughout the city last year, 12 of which were fatal. That number was down from the year before after the city lowered the speed limit, and installed bike lanes, speed bumps and lights in some neighborhoods, but even the mayor has admitted more needs to be done. Ally Donnelly has more.

Posted February 13, 2018

Boston: Walk to the Democratic National Convention 2004 Map

Walk America’s Walking City No doubt you’ll want to see and do a lot while in Boston, so here’s important advice: the easiest, most pleasant and least stressful way to enjoy the city is on foot. WalkBoston, as a member of the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Conventions (CERC), created this guide to encourage DNC delegates and visitors to travel on foot and by public transportation. Shown on the map are most major hotels and a recommended walking route to the FleetCenter. Also noted are some must-see tourist attractions, along with just a few of Boston’s unique and charming neighborhoods including the Back Bay, Beacon Hill, the North End, and the South End.

Click for “Walk to the Democratic National Convention Walking Map” PDF

Boston Comment Letters from 2017 and Earlier

WalkBoston reviews selected development and transportation projects that are located in areas of particular importance to people walking, or that could have impacts on many existing (or future) pedestrians. Comment letters are submitted to the appropriate state or local public agencies.

Vision Zero Coalition Letter to Mayor Walsh 11/21/16

November 21, 2016

Dear Mayor Walsh,

On behalf of the Massachusetts Vision Zero Coalition we would like to thank you for meeting with us to discuss how we can work together to advance progress toward the City’s Vision Zero goals.

We look forward to working with you on the ideas you shared at the meeting including:

Supporting the addition of crashes to your dashboard. We believe that the dashboard should show separate statistics by mode (walking, biking, vehicle, other) and should include both injuries and fatalities. We also think that this crash count should include crashes on state roads that have occurred in Boston -‐-the public is blind to this nuance and this is how the federal data is recorded. We’ve recommended this to your staff and are happy to follow up with them.
An education campaign, and we would like to take you up on your offer to participate in a PSA pertaining to Vision Zero. We are also glad that City staff are working with MassDOT to find ways to collaborate on State and City safety education campaigns.
Doing walking assessments to further explore and experience some of the specific signal issue we discuss. We chatted with BTD staff after the meeting and they offered to go on a walk with us first. We look forward to going on a walking tour with you in the coming months as well.

We would also like to reiterate the requests we made of you in the meeting:

That you will personally commit to ensuring that every department involved in Vision Zero feels the same obligation to bring the number of fatal crashes on our streets to zero, and that all departments are working from the same play book (i.e. the Vision Zero Action Plan; GoBoston 2030) to achieve this goal.
That you will provide additional resources to BTD for Vision Zero in 2017. One way to do this is to charge for parking permits (as is done in surrounding communities: Brookline, Cambridge, Somerville). For example, $30/permit could create 3 million dollars in new revenue in 2017.
That you will work with your staff to create more ambitious Vision Zero goals for 2017 -‐ 2020 that include:
a) Completing all of the goals in the 2016 Action Plan by June 2017
b) Bringing neighborhood slow streets to every residential neighborhood in Boston by 2018 (which the staff have indicated would require additional staff and capital resources).
c) Working toward a city-wide network of separated bike lanes on all major arterials in the next 10 years and a commitment to 10 miles of separated or low stress bike facilities each year.
d) Fixing all of Boston’s traffic signals by 2020, which we understand will require a substantial capital investment by the City (and which we understand to be a very ambitious goal). This would include automatic recall of WALK signals (unless a lightly used, mid-‐block location), Leading Pedestrian Intervals (LPI) with a minimum 7 sec. interval, concurrent signals in all locations where safe (with documentation where concurrent should not be used), maximized WALK time at every intersection (no “reservation” of Don’t WALK time for vehicle throughput), re-‐balancing of signal phasing to serve large volumes of pedestrians (e.g. Park/Tremont), addition of bicycle signals in all locations that include separated bike lane.

We fully recognize that these are not simple or easy asks, so we would like to reiterate our offer to work with your staff to better understand the challenges you are facing, so we can work together to find solutions that can be more quickly implemented. We believe that there is enormous community support for these actions, and that they will result in significant quality of life improvements across the City.

We are more than willing to:

Provide training for City staff
Suggest national experts who have helped other cities manage change
Meet with your leadership team to identify specific issues needing the most attention
Work with the City Council on these questions as well

We would also like to request a follow up meeting with you in June of 2017 to check in on our progress.

As we mentioned, the MA Vision Zero Coalition will be releasing a progress report on December 7th to report on the City’s progress toward the goals set forth in the Vision Zero Action plan.

We have already met with BTD staff to discuss the progress report in more detail and to determine the best way we can work together to both celebrate the progress made, while acknowledging the urgency of this issue and need to set more ambitious goals in 2017. We appreciate their cooperation and willingness to work with us to share information that will help the public see how Vision Zero is advancing in Boston.

Thank you again for your personal commitment to Vision Zero and your willingness to work with us on this critical issue.

For the Massachusetts Vision Zero Coalition -
Becca Wolfson, Boston Cyclists Union Doug Johnson, Boston Cyclists Union
David Read, Dana Farber
Stacy Thompson, LivableStreets Alliance
Brendan Kearney, WalkBoston
Wendy Landman, WalkBoston
Matt Lawlor, WalkUp Rozzie, Walk Boston

Cc Chris Osgood
Gina Fiandaca
Mike Dennehey
Mike Brohel
Vineet Gupta
Charlotte Fleetwood
Kris Carter