Belated 3-Cheers for Crosswalk Signs on Main Street!

Crosswalk signs are helping cars slow down for people.

Earlier this summer, a few crosswalk signs popped up in the middle of Main Street on the yellow lines, making it easier for drivers to notice the white crosswalks painted on the pavement of different areas of the street. Despite some crosswalks being white and some being brick with faded paint or no paint between the bricks, noticing the crosswalks was difficult to a driver. Often times, this driver (me!) would zoom past families waiting to cross the street, thinking "Oh, look at that cute family!" instead of "Duh, that family really needs to cross the street and I should stop."

A belated Three Cheers for the City and Highway Superintendent Anthony "Zep" Thomaselli
for grabbing some of these signs and placing them in the middle of the street. The signs are making it easier for walkers to cross the street, which can take quite a long time if cars don't stop. When we contacted Mayor Casale to ask about these crosswalk signs, and he verified that Mr. Thomaselli placed them in spots on the streets to see how cars and trucks handled them, and that the curb across from the Howland Cultural Center near Beacon Bagel and Echo was too narrow to handle a sign. The mayor also mentioned that Beacon was awarded a substantial federal grant for maintaining crosswalks. Yay! We vote for neon green paint of the brick crosswalks so that drivers really see them, and neon green coordinates with the already green neon signs!

And in slightly related news, there is a vote tonight on who pays for sidewalks that are repaired or replaced during roadwork projects - homeowners or the City. Turns out, a possibly well-intentioned rule was having negative impact on homeowners, which erupted after projects on Oak Street and Henry Street where new sidewalks were put in over the summer, as tracked by a recently created Facebook page, Beacon Sidewalks. Normally, personal property owners need to pay for 100% of their sidewalk repair or replacement. However, if the City is doing roadwork and needs to repair or replace the sidewalk as part of that work, the City splits 50% the cost of replacing or repairing the sidewalk with the homeowner. This sounds like a deal, but in real life, a homeowner puts off replacing their sidewalk and is not prepared to receive a bill for thousands of dollars if the City happens to work on the sidewalk outside their home.

Sidewalk news is becoming a hot topic, as there are different ways to get a sidewalk paid for, including this federal grant that Beacon received for replacing sidewalks on Liberty Street as part of a Safe Routes to School Program. There is mention of narrowing the street, which would be a huge bummer because driving along parked cars is hard enough to squeeze past, not to mention when snow falls and the streets are even more crowded until plowed snow melts or is removed. Not to mention how nerve wracking it is to get children out of car seats in cars when cars whiz by. Wide streets also make it easier for cyclists to ride bikes to work or the store, a movement which Stowe Boyd at Beacon Streets has actively been working on to cultivate through grants and new painted bike symbols on the streets themselves called "sharrows".

UPDATE on 12/2/14: New crosswalks are painted in residential areas.