Politics and the City: More than flashing crosswalks needed to fix pedestrian safety
The Esther Howland Chamber at City Hall can be a stodgy place at City Council meetings Tuesday nights.
That's why it's always a breath of fresh air to see kids file in to the gallery, and the showing from a group of Thorndyke Road Elementary School last week was no exception.
One after another, they bravely took to the microphone and pressed the council to approve a flashing crosswalk signal at Burncoat Street and Thorndyke Road for kids who live on the west side of Burncoat and walk to school.
The students told councilors that without any stoplights on that stretch, drivers go fast on Burncoat Street, and the flashing crosswalk would help kids — and the whole community — cross after school crossing guards leave for the day. They said drivers are increasingly more distracted behind the wheel, which makes the prospect of crossing the street that much more risky.
"As we know, it only takes a second for something to happen," Thorndyke student Kriti Bastola told the council.
As their parents smiled and recorded the testimony, Mayor Joseph M. Petty thanked the students for their advocacy. For their efforts, the petition was sent to subcommittee and the kids were given a standing ovation on their way out the door.
Dysfunction in city government
It was a cute moment, but it illustrated a few levels of dysfunction in city government when it comes to pedestrian safety and the prioritization of fast-as-possible automobile travel over nearly every other aspect of city life.
Essentially, those Thorndyke kids were pleading for their lives: Please put in a few flashing lights at a crosswalk to maybe prevent one of us from getting mowed down on the way to school.
Those flashing crosswalk signals have been all the rage in recent years for politicians looking to put half-measure Band-aids on infrastructural gunshot wounds, but they're just another version of the "beg buttons" pedestrians have to use to cross busy city streets in 20 seconds or less. As anyone who has used one of the flashing crosswalks can tell you, it's still up to drivers whether they want to stop to let you cross.
And as resident Oliver Chadwick astutely pointed out soon after the Thorndyke Road kids made their ask Tuesday night, the biggest threat to pedestrian safety is most often the design of the road itself. Make a road wide and straight and long, and drivers will almost unconsciously drive as fast as they can on it. Make roads narrow and short and reduce crossing distances, and suddenly pedestrians, as they did for nearly two centuries here, regain the upper hand. What about a small roundabout right there at Thorndyke and Burncoat? What about a few roundabouts spaced out along one of the city's longest streets?
The solution to pedestrian safety issues is not just flashing sidewalks or a ridiculous series of useless stop signs or barely noticeable police traffic enforcement or haphazardly placed traffic signals. It's about reimagining the city as a place that's easier to get around without an automobile. As District 2 Councilor Candy Mero-Carlson pointed out in a separate discussion regarding the council's other favorite pastime -griping about parking - even with new housing going up that's close to bus and transit routes, most people living here, realistically, own a car.
It doesn't have to be that way. Sticking a flashing crosswalk sign at the side of the road is easy and politically smart. But really looking at how the built environment, zoning and public transportation in Worcester could be transformed to encourage people to go car-free isn't what gets huzzahs at neighborhood association meetings.
So what we have in the meantime is schoolchildren begging the City Council for a fancy crosswalk and, on the other side of the city, a 5-year-old is clinging to life, her only crime being attempting to cross Stafford Street at 9:30 in the morning two weeks ago with her mom. Another long, way-too-wide, relatively straight road, prized by motorists looking to get in or out of the city, with faded crosswalks and nary a nod to the safety of pedestrians who actually live in the neighborhood, claimed a few more victims.
District 5 Councilor Etel Haxhiaj got upset as she spoke about an order she put on the agenda Tuesday asking for a new traffic study of the Webster Square area that Stafford Street spurs off of. She pleaded with councilors and council watchers to donate to the GoFundMe set up for little Candice Asare-Yeboah and her mother, Asha Nyarki Asare, who suffered a broken leg when a motorist in the Honda CR-V struck the pair while they were in the crosswalk.
What should happen is that the sidewalks on Stafford Street should get a lot wider and the road should get a lot narrower. A few bumped-out crossings might work. Any traffic-calming measures at all would be some improvement there. But in a broader sense, the city needs to start looking at the underlying causes of these issues, because right now, it spends an awful lot of time attending to acute emergencies. Haxhiaj echoed a call from Chadwick earlier in the meeting for Worcester to join other cities in pushing to eliminate traffic violence.
"This is just a 5-year-old girl," Haxhiaj said Tuesday night. "My heart breaks for her. I'm hoping that as a city we can take a serious look not just at the individual behavior of drivers, who have gotten more aggressive during COVID, but that we really, truly commit to a Vision Zero."
Chase Sullivan, one of the Thorndyke students who didn't appear to be too much older than the unresponsive girl in intensive care, put an even finer point on the issue.
"Everyone deserves to feel safe going about their everyday lives," she said.
This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Flashing crosswalk urged by Worcester Thorndyke Road School students
