Yesterday morning at about 6:45am EST, 28-year-old New York native Isaac J. Meyers was on his way to school. The Cambridgeport resident and Harvard University graduate student took a route to the Red Line subway station that I, too, have walked hundreds of times before, after, and while I lived in the neighborhood bordered by the Charles River, Harvard, MIT, and Central Square.

At the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Prospect Street, Meyers entered the crosswalk to get to the other side of the wide and commonly busy street, where the outbound train station is located. He was then hit by a tractor trailer making a delivery to the nearby MIT branch of Shaw’s grocery store and dragged 25 feet to his eventual death.

The huge back wheels of the humongous transport vehicle somehow latched onto Myers, and by all accounts, the driver didn’t come to a stop until people ran after him and flagged him down. Myers was pronounced dead at Massachusetts General Hospital at 12:20pm.

Hub residents have been spending substantial time discussing this event online, initially because some commuters and those who work and live in the area noticed that busses and general traffic were making odd and unexplained detours around Central Square on Monday morning. The main issues at the center of the exchanges are (1) who was at fault for the accident, Meyers or the truck driver, and (2) what is up with the way people bike/drive/walk in Boston?

As long ago as it was, I still remember when I first moved to the Bay State from metropolitan New York. Although Boston drivers have a well-known reputation for their allegedly atrocious attitude and behavior, except for a handful of incidents, my personal experiences with them have been very, very courteous.

I’m constantly amazed at the number of drivers everywhere who stop to let me cross the street when I don’t have the right of way, even when I’m not paying attention and they have to wait for me to recognize their gesture. That rarely happened in the areas of New York I frequented.

Nonetheless, I’m writing about this tragic accident as a reminder to people who both live in and visit Boston that you must remember to use extreme caution on the streets of the state always, whether you’re driving a vehicle, riding a bike, or walking. Become familiar with the rules of the road (and believe me, I know how difficult it is to track them down; you’d think the state government would make it easier), whatever your mode of transportation, and then heed them at all times. This way, we can all do our part to avoid another disastrous and unnecessary event like what happened yesterday.

Condolences to the family and friends of Isaac J. Meyers.

Post from: The Boston Traveler

The results of a recent study titled Footloose and Fancy Free: A Field Survey of Walkable Urban Places in the Top 30 U.S. Metropolitan Areas confirmed what I’ve suspected for quite some time: Boston is one of the best locations in the United States to live if you enjoy walking. The city placed second in the Walkable Urbanism report, behind only Washington, DC.

I first realized how easy it is to get around Boston by foot when I decided to take an off-campus job downtown during graduate school. The position would allow me to earn more money than teaching alone (Boston is a very expensive place to live, you know) and recoup after endless hours of brain-numbing study by getting away from it all on weekdays.

So, like any logical person, I called the transit department for train directions to my destination. I was unfamiliar with the area then, but it took no more than three lunch breaks for me to notice that just about every train stop in metropolitan Boston is no more than two or three blocks from the last one. Some are even as close as one block or less, such as the Park Street and Boylston Street stations on the edge of Boston Common.

From that realization on, I started walking almost everywhere I have to go, and I’m not alone. The Footloose study conducted by Christopher B. Leinberger—a land use strategist, real estate developer, and current visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC—is only a preliminary attempt to quantify the relationship between the numerous factors that make a city more conducive to walking than others. But, I can’t argue with the overall results, which provide additional evidence why Boston is a great city to visit, especially when the weather’s good (unlike now—Brrrrrr!!!).

The top ten walkable cities in the United States as determined by Leinberger’s walkable urbanism study are:

1. Washington, DC
2. Boston, Massachusetts
3. San Francisco, California
4. Denver, Colorado
5. Portland, Oregon
6. Seattle, Washington
7. Chicago, Illinois
8. Miami, Florida
9. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
10. New York, New York

If this particular subject matter is up your alley, you can get a copy of Footloose and Fancy Free for your own in-depth reading and/or learn more about walkable urbanism at the Brookings Institution website.

Post from: The Boston Traveler