Starts and Stops reports that Boston’s most notorious intersection, Columbia Road at I-93, is finally getting a proper traffic light. Those of you who have ever had to cross it on foot will recognize how accurate Daniels’ description is:
When the walk signals activated, the red lights stopped blinking. Few drivers, however, were looking at the signals. The secret here was to watch the traffic, look for a second of clearance, and make a move.
At times, drivers blew through the solid red lights. Pedestrians crossed here looking over their shoulders as though bullets were whizzing over their heads. At other times, drivers purposely blocked the oncoming lane of traffic to negotiate a turn on to Columbia. Once there, though, they competed with traffic trying to turn left from Columbia on to I-93 south.
If there was ever a solid example of why anarchy won’t work in America, the Intersection from Hell was it.
It’s hard to think of another intersection in town so stunningly dangerous and chaotic, but the news did make me think about others in which civil engineering seems to be absent. And of course, it’s pretty easy to think of ones which don’t take adequate account of pedestrian needs. Here are a few that come to mind:
Washington and School Streets. I’ll be the first to admit that financial district pedestrians don’t play by the rules and that their impatience at intersections gums up traffic. But if you make pedestrians wait two minutes during lunch hour (or any other time during the day), they will jaywalk. Why not make the red lights more frequent in such a pedestrian-heavy zone? After all, the School St.-Water St. route should not be a major thoroughfare, the street scale was just not meant for it.
Park and Tremont Streets. Again, the frequency of cross lights is too rare and encourages jay walking. The MBTA could help by opening up a T entrance on the east side of Tremont, but cleary they don’t see it in their interest to help the flow of pedestrian traffic.
Stuart St. and Dartmouth (near Copley Plaza). Don’t know if it’s the 80s vintage of this, but no place seems less inviting to pedestrians - in an area where they should be invited. Suffers from two problems. The intersection is divided up in three parts, meant to accommodate cars turning left and right, but forcing the pedestrian often to wait for multiple lights to cross to the other side. Secondly, it’s the output of the Turnpike, yet nothing seems to be slowing cars down on their way down Stuart St.
Rt. 9 and Brookline Av. (in Brookline). Similar three-part divided crossing and timing of lights means only the quickest (and most crafty at jaywalking) can get across in one light, and even then that’s an impossibility during rush hour. Given the elderly population that often uses this intersection, this seems quite cruel.
Cambridge and First Streets (in E. Cambridge). Lechemere Station lets out here, but you wouldn’t know it by the intersection design and light timing. Not only is the T station designed to make pedestrians walk around, the wide, major thoroughfares make little accommodation for them.
I’m sure I’m overlooking many more. Suggestions are welcome in the comments below.
Finally, Boston planners have an annoying and unwise tendency to require push-buttons to activate ped-crossing signals. This may make sense for intersections with sporadic foot traffic (no need to make cars stop unnecessarily), but for steadily trafficed areas, it’s an encouragement for people to ignore such signage. As it stands, a pedestrian can’t know if the walk signal is not flashing because the lights aren’t condusive or simply because the button wasn’t pressed in time.
Can we pressure the cities involved to do something about poor civil engineering other than to blame the victim by posting snarky signs aimed at pedestrians?
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