BOS:311
CLOSED #101000071677
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My fiancée and I are pleased that Commonwealth Ave and its intersection with Chestnut Hill Ave will be repaved, repainted and receive new street lights. However, we feel it would be a truly lost opportunity not to re tune the pedestrian signals. Since we do not own a car, something common in our neighborhood, we pass through this intersection on foot very often on our way to Cleveland Circle, or the two other branches of the Green Line (the C and D lines) in the area. Having lived in the neighborhood for several years now, we could recite the signal sequence in our sleep. Unfortunately this does not stop not only ourselves from having close calls in the intersection but particularly people who are not familiar with the intersection. As it stands now, if someone were to cross diagonally across the intersection (say, from the south-east side to the north-west side) ONLY when the pedestrian signals shows WALK, we feel it would take that person somewhere in the time frame of 3 to 4 minutes. All this just to cross an intersection! To say this intersection is auto-mobile centric and hostile to area residents on foot is an understatement. We feel that one of the best ways to remedy this would be to enable concurrent pedestrian signalization. In other words, for example, when the signal is green for traffic heading north and south on Chestnut Hill Ave, the pedestrian signals going north/south should display a walk sign. Also, drivers turning right off of Chestnut Hill to go east on Commonwealth, for example, would have to yield to pedestrians before making their turn, something they rarely do at this time because they think they have the right of way due to the DO NOT WALK signal that is almost always there. This could have helped me avoid a particularly irate young woman who was honking and flailing her arms at me and mouthing "Get out of the road!" while she was attempting to make a similar right turn. Not surprisingly, she believed she had complete right of way as it was not explicitly stated otherwise anywhere else. I certainly wasn’t going to wait another 90 seconds for the only time that particular WALK signal lights, which is when the left turn arrows for turning off of Commonwealth go green. Even then, that particular walk signal rarely changes. It is frustrating at minimum. In countless other cities across the world, concurrent pedestrian signalization would have been implemented at this intersection to better accommodate, inform and protect pedestrians all while not impacting traffic flow in any meaningful way. I would be more than happy to speak further about this to give you more information. Thank you! (this is showing without lines between paragraphs!) |
Location
Intersection Of Chestnut Hill Ave And Commonwealth Ave, Brighton, Ma
42.33796706, -71.15315973

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