Reminder: Speak Out For Safety On Mass. Ave. Wed. June 15th!

From Livable Streets:

Now is the time to speak up for a safer Massachusetts Ave!

This Wednesday, June 15^th the City of Boston is holding a community meeting to share proposed design improvements for Massachusetts Avenue from Beacon Street to Harrison Avenue. This is a critical meeting. Will you be there? 

Vision Zero Priority Corridor Mass Ave Public Meeting
June 15, 2016, 6pm – 7:30pm
@ Saint Cecilia Parish, 18 Belvidere St, Boston

Through participating in this meeting you are demonstrating your support not just for a safer Mass Ave, but for strong Vision Zero implementation throughout Boston.

You can do a few things to help out:

1. Share this with your friends and neighbors and encourage them to join you on Wednesday.
2. Wear yellow to the meeting. Yellow is an international color of solidarity for those killed in crashes.
3. Spread the word via social media before and during the meeting using #visionzero, #ProtectMassAve and#crashnotaccident 
4. Speak up at the meeting. Tell the city about your personal experiences and the improvements you’d like to see on Mass Ave

Here are a few suggested talking points:

• Thank you for your commitment to Vision Zero and making Mass Ave safer for everyone!
• Please add protected bike lanes on both sides of Mass Ave, the whole way.
• Re-pave Mass Ave by the Christian Science Center Plaza as soon as possible!
• In areas where protected bike lanes can’t be added this year, please make a commitment to implement them as part of your long-term plan for the street.
• Please make signals shorter to reduce the wait time for pedestrians crossing the street;
• And give pedestrians at least a 6 second head start when they are crossing
• Please make every intersection ‘no right on red’ — and enforce it!

This project is an important step in bringing the number of fatalities on our streets to zero and has the potential to be a model street for other safety improvements throughout Boston.

We know that improving Mass Ave will save lives. We hope to see you on June 15^th!

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The (Dirty) Secrets Of Street Design

Right on Ride on has posted another fascinating article about the way streets are designed, and how they are mostly put together for cars.

When a street is designed there are studies done, stages of planning and review, lots of referencing to standards guides, and usually after all of that is there any public involvement. (Then, of course the street is constructed with whatever variance, no construction job ever goes 100% to plan.)

The studies are generally car-centric. Traffic numbers, connections, types of vehicles and their purposes, types of streets connected, etc. The result of a study is a report a few inches thick. How much of that for bikes? Nil.

Read the rest here.

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