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Go slow? Get serious

Please Slow Down Boston signs

Baker Street in West Roxbury is now lined with City Councilor John Tobin's impromptu slow signs (which makes sense, given that Baker Street is in the heart of the West Roxbury end of his district).

As I was taking pictures of the signs, a resident came out to talk to me (she thought I was photographing her house and was curious why). Have the signs worked? No, she said. What the street really needs, she said, is actual enforcement.

Besides, she added, the problem isn't really daytime drivers, but teenagers who use the street at night for drag racing and games of chicken. And they could care less what the signs say. She said this has been a problem for about a year now - ever since the retirement of a local cop who used to make a point of driving down the street on his patrols.

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Comments

It took me a while to comment on your entry, but I couldn't figure out which part I wanted to take issue with. Turns out, I question pretty much the whole thing, so I'll start at the top.

To say that Baker St is lined with these signs is a stretch. This morning, going by them, I counted all the signs. All 5 of them, 4 of which are within 20 yards of each other, and are basicly in front of 2 houses. In an area where political candidate signs outnumber the houses in election season, I don't think you could say Baker St is lined with the comma-less Slow signs. (One of those signs isn't even really facing Baker St., but that may be nit-picking.)

As for the signs not working yet, I would say that is probably correct. However, the signs have only been available for about 2 weeks, and again, there aren't many of them.

What really gets me is what people say happens on Baker at night. I live right off Baker St. I can see it through my window, I can hear and see what happens on it, and being a night owl, I'm on it almost every night at some point between sundown and 2 or 3 AM, a few times most nights. Its not anything like its portrayed. Do people speed on Baker St? Of course they do. The speed on Spring St, Centre St, LaGranmge, the VFW, Washington St, Northdale, Belle Ave, and pretty much every St in the area. To call Baker a drag strip is ridiculous. It isn't even in the top 20 worst streets in West Roxbury, I would say.

Now, as for the enforcement part. There have been many speed traps on Baker in the last year, make no mistake. The lady you talked to said that the problem has become worse since Officer Kilduff, our local traffic cop, retired. Well, if its a night problem she's talking about, what good would Kilduff have done? I would guess he had not worked a night shift for decades before he retired. You would NEVER see him working after rush hour, and he was the only traffic enforcement guy around. As for games of chicken? I don't see it. Never have seen it. Don't believe it happens, really. And if it did, it sure wouldn't happen anywhere near the signs in the picture, which is near the curve before Spring St. Chicken is a straight line road game, and wouldn't/couldn't occur in front of that lady's house.

People regularly go 10-15 mph above the limit on Baker at night. Always have. Same as it ever was, really. Its not just teens, its everyone. There are plenty of areas to drag race in Boston or around it, and Baker really isn't one of those places. And if we are going to say the problem begins and ends with teens, then I guess we are just going to ignore the frail, confused elderly lady who took out the traffic lights just about 200 ft away from those signs, using her Toyota. Or The elderly man who hit 4 cars in a row last year a bit closer to Centre St. Not a teen in sight for those accidents, was there?

I don't mind the signs. I like John Tobin, and I like the fact he used campaign money to make up the signs. But the exaggeration of some sort of speeding epidemic with West Roxbury teens on this street is laughable. Its pretty cool that there isn't much else to complain about around here, but that's no reason to manufacture or overstate other problems.

Other than that, love the site! Keep up the good work, Adam.

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Thanks for the reminder of the dangers of a single-source story.

As for the "lining the street" thing, I guess I was impressed that there were any of the signs at all, let alone a bunch of them clustered together. I've yet to see any of them anywhere else in Roslindale or West Roxbury (although granted, it's not like I've been driving up and down every block hunting for them; I just happened to turn onto Baker and there they were).

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And now I have that damned Gerry Rafferty "Baker Street" stuck in my head for the rest of the day...

*saxophone riff*

http://1smootshort.blogspot.com

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