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Comments
Speed limit there is 20mph
And a curve that drops down to 15. People regularly speed through there. City is planning on putting in bike lanes to help, but they need other physical improvements. Especially at the crosswalks.
bike lanes
Sorry, how are bike lanes going to "help"? Are bike lanes going to make cars slow down? I doubt that.
The problem, as I see it, is that the Walter - Bussey intersection is so busy, it probably needs lights. They can't do that, given its proximity to Centre st. It would cause an epic mess and worse accidents.
Also, the Hebrew Rehabilitation Centre staff are all parking on Walter.
Bussey / Walter reminds me of the Milton St overpass in Readville. That intersection degrades into outright lawlessness. There's not much the city can do about it, given the topography and abutting property.
Bike Lanes
The bike lanes help because the narrow the street. People instinctively slow down when there is less room. This is a well known phenomenon and does indeed work. Other ideas might include a mini rotary at the Walter-Bussey intersection, and curb bumps at the route 51 bus stops.
Narrowing the roadway does
Narrowing the roadway does make drivers slow down - but only if it's physically narrowed. Paint alone doesn't do anything.
Driving too fast for existing conditions:
Driving too fast for existing conditions is how the vast majority of motor vehicular accidents occur. An awful lot of people seem to forget that fact. More caution is needed in this weather while driving, especially around curves.
Speed limit there is pure baloney
First off, someone spinning out on the really horrible roads this morning probably has little or nothing to do with the regular posted speed limit.
But with respect directly to your statement "Anon"...that section of Walter is a long, mostly empty stretch of road with a speed limit half that of the nearby residential streets - you know, the ones with people actually living on them. To add to the silliness, there's no limit zone a few blocks away at Fallon Field, a Rosi location used by many more pedestrians - a great number of which are children and senior citizens.
So I can totally see a 35mph zone for that road, but 20mph is just a speed trap and a suckup to Harvard - and the over-entitled drive-in users of the Arb.
(Also MM - the intersection is hardly "lawless". Quite the opposite - the vast majority of people do the zipper thing fairly routinely. In fact, I can't think of another so heavily travelled intersection that works so well with no signal at all.)
Over-entitled
drive-in users of the Arboretum? Where do you get that? Not everyone is lucky enough to live within walking distance of the Arb, so because they want to enjoy nature, walk their dog, take grandma out for a walk in the Spring, have a place for the kids to play and run and ride their scooters and tricyles, makes them entitled? It's a park, that's what happens in a park.
Arb is not a public park
It's a private conservancy with public access.
And that's quite a pretty strawman you've got there - doing all those things you listed does not make many of the drive-ins over-entitled. Not parking in posted parking areas but instead along the margin of city streets, and jay walking across those same streets when there are clearly marked crosswalks - that makes them over-entitled.
Public Park
That's what the Arboretum calls it on it's website. It's owned by the City of Boston and managed by the Arboretum. It's part of the Emerald Necklace. It's open every day of the year, free of charge. Not sure how it's a private conservancy. It's different from the Trustees properties, for instance.
And most of the cars parked along Walter Street Monday through Friday and the weekend too, belong to people who work at one of the local health institutions including Faulkner Hospital. A neighbor used to park there to avoid the low-parking charge (at the time, I don't know what it is now) that Faulkner offered its employees.
If jay-walking means someone is over-entitled, then your description pretty much covers everyone who lives and visits the City of Boston.
You both have pieces of it
The land was given to the City by the Weld family, after some tax issues from what I heard from a descendent (who was not a former governor).
Harvard University has facilities at the Arboretum and maintains the grounds. Park rangers theoretically patrol the grounds, but when one sees the unleashed dogs all over the place, the reality might be otherwise.
Of course, we are talking Walter Street. And I'm still trying to figure out where the playground is nearby that is not Fallon Field.
Do tell
Which local street has a 40 MPH speed limit?
Youre right - two thirds
I was under the impression that the unposted limit in Boston was 35mph, but it is 30mph. So two thirds, not one half (or five eighths)
I still think it's silly for a stretch of road with very few residences to be posted at 20, while nearby roads with far more foot traffic are unposted with a higher limit.
Was an engineering traffic study ever done on that stretch? You're not allowed to post limit signs without one, and I'm skeptical a legitimate traffic engineer would conclude that upper Walter St. needed to be slower than thickly settled lower Walter.
The reason
The reason the speed limit was lowered to 20 MPH, and the crosswalks were installed, on that stretch of Walter is that it has a park where children play on one side, and homes where children live on the other, and has a history of serious speeding-related problems, including children seriously injured.
The area abutting Fallon Field, which has a stoplight on the corner, does not have the same problem, although the city could reduce the speed limit there to 20 also if the neighborhood wanted it.
No engineering study is required for this type of reduction. Did you get that factoid from the same region as the 40 MPH speed limit?
Too fast for road conditions
People are driving as or even more aggressively than usual. It's not surprising to see spun out cars. I think people are in even more of a hurry since the roads are so narrow no one can get anywhere quickly even at off hours. It's too bad people don't just take more time. I bet that guy ended up even more delayed than if he had been driving slower. I do wonder if someone was tailgating him and provoked this accident.
Tailgating
What was he doing, going the speed limit?
How about an all-way stop?
I live right near this intersection and often cross at Walter and Bussey on foot, bike, and in car. My two-cent recommendation is to make this an all-way stop and to make the parking two- or three-hour to prevent the Hebrew Senior Life staff from parking there all day.