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Expect to see more cops, signs on Centre Street in West Roxbury; meeting planned on complete road redesign
By adamg on Thu, 02/07/2019 - 4:04pm
City and state elected officials are vowing an immediate increase in traffic enforcement along Centre Street to try to reduce the odds of pedestrians getting run down, following a fatal crash involving a pedestrian on Tuesday, City Councilor Matt O'Malley says.
But along with added police presence and new signs along the street, officials - who included state Rep. Ed Coppinger and state Sen. Mike Rush - agreed today to hold a community meeting by month's end to begin looking at redesigning the road altogether, as well as other steps the city could take to reduce crashes and fatalities along West Roxbury's main shopping street, O'Malley said.
Two years ago, Northeastern University civil-engineering researchers proposed reducing the number of travel lanes on Centre from four to two and to take other steps to make pedestrian crossings safer. They said the move would not lead to any extra congestion because Centre Street does not really carry as much traffic as people might think.
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good ole Boston
Where it takes multiple deaths and a complete, pro-bono plan to even get the conversation started on improving pedestrian safety.
Yup, and then
everyone (except friends and family of the victim) will kind of forget about it and they'll abandon any plan for change and then BACK TO NORMAL!
Maybe E5
Can start with the entitled dog owners who double park next to their station. It’s an active pedestrian area and drivers are forced to jump out from behind the double parked cars as you don’t see them exiting the rotary.
Also the light at Park should be removed and pushed down to Hastings which has 5x move foot traffic. The light at Park sees far left pedestrian activity.
Or maybe the boys down at E-5
Or maybe the boys down at E-5 can start by addressing their own parking malfeasances (and those of their contractors). Police cars (marked or unmarked) are routinely parking in (if not across) the Centre Street crosswalk and beyond the 'No Parking Past This Point' sign that precedes the rotary exit southbound onto the W. Roxbury Parkway.
Haha
While I agree, cops enforce rules they don’t follow them.
What you asking is as crazy as ending police details on dead end street. It’s never going to happen.
They vote in blocks and political hacks know it.
Double parking
Way to be divisive, if we make this into small pissing matches we’ll definitely make progress. People double park picking up dogs, bagels, dry-cleaning, and ladies from the salon. It’s equally assholic.
Let's not forget the folks
Let's not forget the folks double-parked a few doors down to pick up burritos from Los Amigos or, worse, the proprietors of same parking their obnoxious van in the active lane, seemingly more often than not.
You do know that Station 13
You do know that Station 13 used to be on the corner of Hastings and Centre and it has moved a few times.
Lots of city
Intersections need stepped up enforcement. How do we make that happen?
Hire some people that are not
Hire some people that are not cops to direct traffic?
Wait for drivers to kill
Wait for drivers to kill people at those intersections. That seems to be the only way to get Walsh and the city council to act.
Just saw another accident
Was driving home to Rozzie from the Parkway Y a few minutes ago and saw the aftermath of ANOTHER accident at that same intersection (Centre and Hastings). Fortunately it did not look like anyone was hurt, but one of the cars seemed like it was totaled. It's unconscionable how this city waits until a tragedy occurs to even think about implementing changes...I'm not holding my breath on this one.
In the past 3 years 234 peds & cyclists have been killed in MA
Walsh and the city councils plan to wait until a driver kills a pedestrian or cyclist to make a street safe is going to take a long time, and a lot of death and carnage, to make Boston a safe walkable city.
In the past 3 years 234 pedestrians and cyclists have been killed by drivers in MA. Baker, Deleo and the other people in power seem to be fine with that.
https://www.visionzerocoalition.org/fatalities_map?utm_campaign=smb_2_7_...
Plans like those for Rutherford Ave in Charlestown to make it safer were backtracked after the sex predator Steve Wynn gave Walsh money to encourage people to drive to his casino.
Not good numbers
But better than the numbers for murder or drug overdoses.
Point?
I'm not sure what point your trying to make. A good portion of the murders are gang related and using drugs is risky behavior. Are you trying to argue that walking down the street to go get a sandwich is in line with those sorts of dangerous behaviors?
The point is
That's one death roughly every 5 days for the entirety of Massachusetts, from the Berkshires to Cape Cod, from rural towns to densely populated cities. It sucks for those 234 people and their families and friends, but it's not exactly a crisis. Throwing stats out like that is like a certain TV reality show host cum head of state pointing to incident of illegal aliens committing crimes to bolster a border crackdown.
By the way, good job downplaying murders.
Exactly. Privledged people
Exactly. Privledged people want the police to divert all their resources from Roxbury, Dorchester and Mattapan, communities plagued by violence, so that white people can safely cross the street.
Um, no
BPD is large enough that it can handle extra traffic patrols in West Roxbury without diverting a single crime-fighting beat cop from B-2, B-3 and C-11. Worst case, with the mayor's approval, they'll use overtime to bring in extra cops, if the traffic-enforcement and motorcycle cops (who are not assigned to a specific district) aren't enough.
Now what you might want to be asking is how come high-profile crashes in places like West Roxbury and South Boston get immediate attention, but similar crashes in other neighborhoods maybe don't.
Exactly why
I started coming to this site. A lot of "activity" takes place that is never reported in the media, but observations can be found here. Knowledge of certain events would be bad for property values......
Not good numbers
But better than the number of people dying from natural causes.
What was your actual point here?
3,000 people killed on 9/11.
3,000 people killed on 9/11. Not good numbers, but better than the 35,000 Americans killed every year by drivers, right Waquiot?
Well we didn't ban airplanes after 9/11
Which would have been a Kinopio reaction. I think that was some of the point he was getting at.
I always thought Swirly had the right answer. Have harder driving tests and make them through with medical exams and everything. Maybe even a simulator.
Of course he'd like to forget
That a lot of those 35,000 dead were drivers, and only a few were outside of motor vehicles.
I don't really see how that changes the argument?
If the argument is that drivers + cars are dangerous, the fact that they kill each other just as much (or more) than they kill people outside of cars, doesn't change that fact. If anything, it argues for limiting cars, since they're clearly dangerous both to others and to their own operators.
It doesn't
Except that Kinopio couldn't care less about the occupants of motor vehicles.
Even I think my analogy is weak, but I want to explain it a bit. When I had my son, I read the book "What to Expect: the First Year." That book, along with a lot of other sources, tried to scare parents about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, which is really scary and can allegedly be prevented through a few steps, one of which is making sure your infant sleeps on its back (the line is "Back is Best.) So, I'm reading along in the book and it gets to the point where there is a discussion of your baby rolling over while sleeping. At this stage, the book notes that SIDS is not that common, so don't worry if the kid rolls over.
Now, every parent worries about their kid dying unnecessarily, so you try to make sure your kid is as safe as possible. In the case of Centre Street in West Roxbury, I hope that the MIT people, the BTD, and there other stakeholders get together and work out a way to make the street safe while allowing people to get from A to B. If there's a realistic way to ensure less people are hit by cars, great. That said, I think this narrative that cars are inherently dangerous or that there is an epidemic of pedestrians getting killed by cars (and it is pedestrians over cyclists by a large margin) is just silly. 0.01% of Americans die in car crashes every year. I'd love to see the number lower, but there are a lot more things that kill more people each year.
Do you know which state has
Do you know which state has the lowest road deaths per million vehicle-miles?
Hint: it's not the other 49.
Now you're skewing the math
They were explicitly talking about auto-pedestrian and auto-bicycle fatalities.
I'd love to see those stats, though.
And we need to prevent this in future street design
Boston is also going to be undertaking a redesign and rebuild of Commonwealth Ave from Packard's Corner to Warren St. in Allston (aka "Commonwealth Ave Phase 3-4"). Currently a truly awful stretch of roadway for drivers, pedestrians, cyclists, and T riders. Here's the thing: in the first project meeting, city staff noted that traffic volumes are low enough that a 2-lane road would be sufficient to handle all of the traffic, and yet they are proposing to rebuild a 4-lane road! Five lanes wide at intersections, plus 2 more lanes in the side 'carriageways.' For a city that has declared Vision Zero commitments and is seeing the tragedies of streets with excessive vehicle capacity, it's important that a new rebuild of a street not repeat these same mistakes. The Comm Ave project has been on hold for a while now, but when it starts up again, it's important to hold the city to its safety commitments.