Residents throughout the city are frustrated with the glacial response on the part of the City to be able to implement timely, common sense and reasonable cost solutions to promoting pedestrian safety. We need to set aside the bike lane wars and focus on pedestrian safety.

If we proactively increase pedestrian safety, as a by-product we naturally increase safety for people exiting their cars, for bicyclists and for other motorists. You also give people their neighborhoods back as they have confidence that they can let their older children walk to playgrounds, schools and friends’ homes, because there is not exceptional and unpredictable risk presented by traffic.

The City’s fundamental approach is needlessly technocratic, bureaucratic and nearly always reactive. Every problem needs to be studied interminably with solutions usually involving capital-intensive, infrastructure re-designs that have to wait years for budget appropriation.

Here are some lower cost solutions that can tangibly increase pedestrian safety immediately and can be implemented quickly and at reasonable cost.

1. SPEED HUMPS not speed bumps, in identified problem areas with priority going to schools, playgrounds and areas with high pedestrian activity.

Getting the right number of speed humps is essential as the City has too often installed too many in a short distance frustrating everyone.

2. PEDESTRIAN ON-DEMAND RED LIGHTS ON HIGH SPEED STREETS OUTSIDE OF LIGHTED INTERSECTIONS

I am a lifelong mountaineer, but the most dangerous activity that I engage in is trying to cross Centre Street anywhere from the Jamaicaway Rotary to the West Roxbury Parkway Rotary. In a couple of locations near Faulkner Hospital, yellow light-activated pedestrian signals have been installed but have only made it more dangerous. A high percentage of cars do not comply with the yellow light, and naive pedestrians, like kids, may think it is safe to proceed across the four lanes of speeding traffic. There are close calls every day.

I challenge any public official or employee who thinks otherwise to walk me with me 20 times across an on-demand, yellow-lighted crosswalk on Centre.

3. STOPPING ALL TRAFFIC AT INTERSECTIONS WHEN PEDESTRIAN WALK SIGNS ARE ON.

The absolute insanity of activating right hand turn signals for cars at the same time as pedestrian walk signals has always left me dumbfounded, and in some cases nearly hit. At least two people have been killed in Boston by this so-called traffic design in the last few years. The measure should always be: Can my 10-year-old by themselves cross this intersection safely and clearly?

4. VEHICLES GOING RIGHT AROUND LEFT-TURNING TRAFFIC AT MAJOR INTERSECTIONS

All vehicles, but particularly trucks and buses, have killed many in this highly unpredictable, often chaotic scene. This requires more traffic calming measures such as dedicated left-hand lanes or sidewalk bump outs to deny the needed room to swing widely and too wildly right to hurry through the intersection.

5. DEDICATED TRAFFIC POLICE

I have lived in Boston for four decades, and Boston Police have always shown a lack of interest in traffic enforcement. Compared to driving in suburban or near-by, out-of-state areas, you have to be a truly bad or highly aggressive driver to get ticketed within the city limits.

We need Boston Police who are dedicated ONLY to traffic enforcement and in sufficient numbers to alter the driving culture and habits of Boston’s infamously bad drivers.

In the early days of the Menino administration, BPD conducted intensive traffic enforcement operations over a couple of weeks for not yielding to pedestrians in unlighted crosswalks in JP’s business district. Two hundred tickets later, driving behavior there changed for many years.

These measures are not about bike lanes. This is about common sense, low cost measures to promote pedestrian safety, whether it is you exiting a car, your child crossing a street or better protecting the elderly with slower reaction times. Pedestrian safety benefits everyone and is also major step in maintaining the quality of life in our neighborhoods.

Tony LaCasse

Roslindale

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