Finnishing the Emerald Necklace

One thing about Jeb Sharp's reporting. Yes, the political city of Boston has under 700,000 people and the political city of Helsinki has just under 600,000, but Greater Boston has close to 4.5 million versus 1.2 million, so our traffic volume is bound to be higher. Jeb Sharp works locally, she could have easily done a better job on this.

Now. I all suggest you watch the film and then ask yourself these questions;

1. I'm wondering how many junkies gave up crack while watching a green thing come out of the weeds near Fire Department Alarm Headquarters?

2. Why couldn't our green friend just walked 200 feet to the right and crossed Route 9 at the intersection of Huntington and South Huntington? 200 feet to the right, rather than have traffic backed up all the way to the Pru with another traffic light is much better urban planning.

3. Did she do any research and realize that someone is trying to fix up the Duck House? http://fenwaycivic.org/bulletin-board/duck-house/

Glad to see Harvard ( As In Harvard GSD and Harvard's media arm WGBH, 1/2 owner of The World) keeps throwing criticism at us locals. It is easy to say you should do this and you should do that when you have $35B in the bank and when one of your students has a floor 30% tax rate to work with in a municipal budget.

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I'm sure that by the standards of the Scandinavian miracle states, the Emerald Necklace is a decrepit mess. But by our local standards, it's still a gem.

Although I live out in Hyde Park, I use parts of the park network all the time (I'm a distance runner). Jaakkola claims she never sees anyone, but I can only imagine that's because she's visiting during typical work hours. On weekends and evenings, you will see a steady stream of walkers, runners, stroller-pushers, and cyclists cruising the paths all along the length, from Franklin Park to the Common.

We should all celebrate the fact that we can easily walk from Boston Common, through the beautiful Public Garden, down the elite Comm Ave Promenade, up through the multi-use park in the Fens, wind our way along the Muddy River, stroll around Jamaica Pond, cross to the Arboretum, and make our way to expansive Franklin Park. Along the way, there are easy pedestrian connections to the Southwest Corridor Park, VFW Parkway, Centre Street, and the American Legion Highway, which in turn can take you to Brook Farm, Millennium Park, Stony Brook Reservation, and Forest Hills Cemetery. It's a vast network of green spaces within Boston, all of which are connected to some degree by protected pedestrian paths. That's an achievement we can be proud of.

That being said, there are definitely areas along the Emerald Necklace that need improvement:

1. Everything about the Charlesgate is a dumpster fire: hot garbage. It needs better pedestrian connections from Comm Ave to the Fens, and it needs any connection over to the Esplanade/Charles River paths.
2. The Victory Gardens could use some lighting and maybe police presence late at night. This is the one area of the Emerald Necklace I would hesitate to endorse to a Scandinavian walking alone at night.
3. I have high hopes that the Muddy River daylighting will conclude with better pedestrian crossings around the Landmark Center area.
4. As the article points out, the lack of pedestrian crossing at Route 9 is vexing. Yes, there are legal crossings at both South Huntington and Brookline Ave, but this is a major pedestrian and bike route, and users aren't going to go out of their way. There's even an existing curb but in the median that encourages crossing here.
5. Along the stretch from Leverett Pond to Jamaica Pond, there are supposed to be separate pedestrian and bicycle paths. I'm all for separate paths, but these are badly marked and the separation is universally ignored. This needs to be redesigned.
6. There's a water fountain in the Fens by the stadium, and a water fountain at the boathouse on Jamaica Pond. There is, however, not a bathroom to be found between the Common visitor's center and the Jamaica Pond boathouse (and I can't remember the last time the one at the boathouse wasn't padlocked). The only public restroom I can think of along the Emerald Necklace is in the clubhouse on the golf course at Franklin Park.
7. The pedestrian crossings at the Centre/Arborway rotary are not safe, and bicycles regularly use the sidewalk between Jamaica Pond and the Arboretum, despite marked bike lanes.
8. The new at-grade roadways at Forest Hills promise to allow safer pedestrian routes from the Arboretum over to Franklin Park and Forest Hills Cemetery, but I worry that the connection to the Southwest Corridor Park will be worse.

Despite these correctable failings, the original Emerald Necklace and the later spurs I listed above are an amazing resource for the city.

I clicked on this story, Amazon eagerly showed me a bunch of...emerald necklaces. One with a shamrock pendant, the other a turtle.