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Pedestrian hit by T bus in Newmarket Square dies

NECN reports a person hit by an MBTA bus at Massachusetts Avenue and Theodore Glynn Way Thursday night has died.

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Comments

I don't know anything about the circumstances of this particular incident, but the pedestrian situation in Newmarket Square -- flower sellers, people soliciting money, substance abusers -- is quite bad. I try to avoid going that way as much as I can. Condolences to the family of the pedestrian, and to the MBTA driver who may have been dealing with a very challenging situation.

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The stretch of Mass Ave between Woods Mullen and South Bay is a pedestrian nightmare!

Condolences.

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...but allow me to throw out some narrow minded victim blaming.

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Newmarket Square is a city planning nightmare. The area has been recently redone, but it remains extremely challenging to navigate safely, no matter how you're doing it. This is not the deceased pedestrian's fault, and I don't believe anyone ever said it was.

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Not seeing it. Sorry.

Spend any time down there? There is a lot of clutter, and a lot of zombies, and everything else that make it tough to navigate regardless of mode.

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Please don't refer to other people as "zombies".

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To and from the Moakley fields, depending on the route I take. Does that meet your requirements for me to comment?

Yeah its not a well designed area for mobility but the initial comment I was responding to just seemed to have some very specific comments about pedestrians selling flowers and soliciting money in a situation with very little details.

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Thank you as well to our first responders.

I also don't know anything about the circumstances of this particular incident at this point, but the pedestrian infrastructure in Newmarket Square -- wide roads, horrid pedestrian connectivity between broken sidewalks with worn out + unsignalized crosswalks [if they exist there at all] -- is quite bad.

Here is the corner of Mass Ave & Theodore Glynn Way on street view: https://goo.gl/maps/SjSbrxCp9ZA2

WalkBoston is working with the City and others to address issues. If anyone wants to help push on this and other problems, please reach out - we're WalkBoston on twitter, or send me a message.

Someone else mentioned Mass/Melnea Cass - you can see some of the craziness of that super wide intersection in this presentation (it is a Prezi - photos/video on an overlay of engineering plans, so it could take a bit to load, but it moves around the intersection w/ highlights from our observations). http://bit.ly/VZB-2015-10-19-prezi

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I tried using 311 to get one of those yellow "Yield to pedestrians in crosswalk $150 fine" repaired after a driver hit the one by my house again. 311 said they aren't replacing them until April. Has WalkBoston brought this up to anyone? Does the city think that pedestrians don't use crosswalks between December and April? Thanks

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I don't know about Boston, but I submitted a 311 request a year or two ago in Somerville re the mid-crossing pedestrian yield sign on College Ave just before Davis, and received a response that (if I'm remembering correctly) they are taken out of service during winter because they prevent plowing. FYI.

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@kinopio - can you share the 311 case number (or link) on that so we can follow up?

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Sure. It is 101001967223

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Not that they shouldn't replace them, but I can understand why they wouldn't want to replace any more of them until the coming winter is over.

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What they shouldn't want is for pedestrians to be killed in crosswalks. Whenever the sign is knocked down it takes much longer until a driver slows down enough for me to cross. Most drivers break the law and speed by if there is no sign by the crosswalk.

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Perhaps it is because they don't see the crosswalk!boston needs multiple sigmas to driver that a crosswalk is present - streetsignage/ flashing lights, extended curbs that keep cars from parking too close to the crosswalk blocking line of sight and adequate painting on the road. The curbing would also make the distance the pedestrian is in the street much shorter. Check out

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I wonder if it has anything to do with the budget for 2016?

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This stretch is definitely a mess. (And as long as we have to show our Mass Ave through Newmarket street cred: I've been driving around that area since the late 80s and now drive through the area daily to get to work.)

I think what we're dealing with is a n'hood that has been in transition from one type of land use (and users) to new ones. The area used to be active industrial (as opposed to abandoned industrial) with a lot of contractor yards and such. Years ago I would be at Waldo Brothers picking up building supplies on a weekly basis. There was 1010 Mass Ave for picking up your construction permits - so you would have people walking from their parked pickups on Magazine Street and around the park to 1010 Mass Ave and back. Other pedestrian traffic was just weird. (And Fort Apache Studios across the park too!)

More recently the closure of the Long Island shelter and the presence of drug addiction treatment centers and shelters in the area has resulted in the n'hood becoming the homeless epicenter of Boston - so there are a LOT more pedestrians. Some of whom are in varying states of consciousness and many who have questionable judgement for life tasks, like crossing very busy streets. The Mass Ave/Melnea Cass intersection takes on a developing world street bazaar/traffic stop with the addition of flower sales, newspaper sales (in the a.m.), drug sales, panhandling, window washing....I just wish there were some jugglers.

South Bay shopping Center introduces a suburban parking lot culture with all the vehicle traffic - right next to a newish Fairmont Line stop. And now at the far end of Mass Ave we have the encroachment of Dot's gentrification with the Dorchester Brewing Company and the mixed-use development slated for that corner. This all results in more pedestrian traffic on the bones of a truck-oriented streetscape -- so expect things to suck.

As far as the unfortunate accident in question, there was some construction going on at that intersection in the last week or two - not sure if that played any role.

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I am not an urban planner/architect, but as someone who live adjacent to Boston Medical, is there a way to add a barrier either to the sidewalk or the median strip that compels pedestrians to use the crosswalks at the corners with traffic lights?

On more occasions that I can count, any number of people just cross the 5+ lanes of Massachusetts Avenue wherever they please, walking right into oncoming traffic, forcing drivers to swerve to avoid them, or jam on their brakes to not hit them.

In other major cities (London comes to mind) there are barriers on heavily trafficked streets that funnel pedestrians into the crosswalk, greatly reducing jay walking.

Would these barriers help or would human nature/real world over-ride them?

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The barriers are a great idea in very busy areas.

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Can we get some PSAs that pedestrians don't have the right of way in areas with crosswalks unless they're in one, and if it's signalized, they have the walk signal? Every day while walking or driving, I see people going across a crosswalk against the light, or across the middle of a block that has crosswalks, yelling at cars that won't stop. These people often have small children with them. Can we say child endangerment? Why on earth wouldn't you go to the end of the block and push the button and wait for the signal?

And can we get the lights reprogrammed so the walk light stops all traffic (or "turn on green arrow only"), so people can't make a right or left into pedestrians who have the right of way?

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