How did safety for pedestrians in crosswalks on Centre Street in West Roxbury and safety for bicycle riders become a partisan issue?

The death of a resident crossing Centre St last year, who by the way was not the first resident to be killed trying to cross Centre St, made people ask, What can we do to make the street safer for everyone? To answer that question problem solvers asked other important questions such as, when does severe injury or death result from collisions between cars, pedestrians and cyclists?

Drivers who hit bicyclists and pedestrians don't sustain the vast majority of the injuries, the cyclists and pedestrians do. Human beings aren't built to sustain injuries resulting from collisions with cars going fast. The rate of speed of the car at the time of the collision is a very important factor in the injury sustained. City of Boston cited statistics about the speed of cars and the liklihood of severe or fatal injury in collisions. There is a 17% chance of severe or fatal injury being struck by a car going 20mph, 30% chance being struck by a car going 25 mph, and 47% being struck by a car going 30 mph.

Two design principles of safe streets are 1) limit the likilhood of collisions between cars, cyclists and pedestrians and 2) reduce the speed of cars involved in collisions to rates that allows cyclists and pedestrians to survive them.

The speed limit in Boston is 25 mph but for many drivers that is the exception and not the rule. Enforcement works when enforcement occurs but street design works even when enforcement falls off. Street design is a critical factor in speed abatement and speed is a critical factor in the extent of injury up to and including death when collisions occurs.

Center St is West Roxbury neighborhood's main street. It has a dual purposes, people go there to run errands and people take it to go somehere else. When people take it to go sommewhere else they often like to go as fast as conditions allow. They appreciate that is is designed like parkway, two lanes each direction. When they go by car to shop aconvenient parking space is the goal.

Centre has four lanes, is undivided, and has two more lanes allocated for on-street parking. There is a lot of off street parking, often one or two blocks away. Cyclists share a lane with cars and are at severe risk in collisions with cars. Pedestrians are at risk because when cars in the near lane stop for them to cross, the cars in the next lane can't see them crossing and often continue until it is too late to stop to avoid the collision.

Let's fix Centre St in West Roxbury so it accomodates safe travel and makes our main street feel more like a neighborhood and less like a parkway.