The candidates on making Boston streets safer and improving public transit

Glad they asked about speed/red light cameras. It's unbelievable that dangerous, law breaking drivers are allowed to get away with their criminal behavior when we have the technology to easily catch them and save lives.
Yes, the speed limit was lowered in Boston but it doesn't matter because Boston cops are not enforcing the laws. Boston area drivers are killing more and more people. Do something about it.

This CityLab article is about how Walsh talks the transit talk but doesn't back it up with action. One thing that's clear in the vision zero responses is that Jackson's contain much more regarding specific actions and Walsh talks more high level about programs but adds a lot of wiggle room when it comes to specific actions.

I also wonder if the form was a bit confusing to him and he didn't realize that he was supposed to indicate "yes" or "no" or if he just wanted to avoid directly committing to anything in the questionnaire.

I'm pretty sure that Tito Jackson wrote the answers to this questionnaire himself (perhaps dictating to a staffer) whereas it seems likely that Walsh's answers were generated by his staff. I have heard Tito give detailed answers like these off the top of his head while I doubt Marty can do the same. Disclosure: I am a volunteer on the Jackson campaign.

Also, as mentioned above, interesting that Walsh never answered the Yes/No part of each question. Make it so much easier for him to claim he never said he would actually DO anything.

One of my first actions as Mayor will be a comprehensive audit of the City’s operating and capital budgets. This will be done with transparency and accountability to the residents of Boston. A comprehensive audit will allow us to understand where city funds are being poorly allocated and move forward with better distribution of resources, adopting a budget that better reflects the City’s needs and priorities. 

Umm, the city's budget is audited every year and councilors are already supposed to be doing the rest during the annual budget process. Other than a handful of development giveaways like Winthrop Square, it's about the only meaningful thing the council pulls down $110k large for.

So what you are saying is neither you nor your colleagues do your job?

That's why I'm voting for the clown.

About 10 years ago Boston City employee "Bob" received in the mail a ticket from Wilmington, DE for a red light violation from a traffic camera. Ticket has a photo with a black driver "Steve" in a vehicle with Delaware plates going through the red light (Bob is white). Bob has never been to Delaware and has a car with Massachusetts plates. Steve must get ticket in mail, gets Bob's driver's information somehow and tells the Delaware appeal/court/police system that Bob was driving the car, not Steve. I guess this works and the ticket gets transferred to Bob.

I tried to help Bob appeal this ticket and it was pretty much impossible. The police have zero control over the system, and is not one person in the entire city, county, or court system that could talk in person about the issue. After about 10 hours of phone calls and waiting for calls back, I ended up getting a hold of a nice woman who worked in the Governor's office who was a Red Sox fan and used to live in Boston. She called Bob and ended up settling the issue.

Maybe this was an extreme example, but I can't imagine how the appeal/court process would work on this. I guess if done properly, people don't run red lights, the streets are safer and the City makes money. On the other hand there will be 10-50X the amount of unpaid fines and suspended licensed drivers on the streets (knowing how irresponsible a good section of our driving population is when it comes to paying tickets and doing their proper RMV paper work)

This has actually somewhat improved my view of Tito. His responses all sound passionate and excited and positive, while Walsh's all come across as heavily edited form responses that don't actually answer anything and were clearly written by a team of his staff.

I still don't really like either of them, but I think Tito might be better for Boston.

Minor sticking point being his opposition to charging for resident permits. No one likes spending more money, but they should be charging a nominal fee like Somerville does, for example. I liked Walsh's idea of charging more the more cars you have.