Framingham forums on Open Space & Recreation Plan

From William Hanson, chair of the Framingham Bicycle & Pedestrian Advisory Committee:

Four public forums are coming up to encourage public participation in the preparation of the next edition of the
Framingham Open Space and Recreation Plan. The future of rail trail development in Framingham is one aspect of this plan. Those with an interest in trails or other types of outdoor recreation should attend one or more of these sessions.

Monday, November 26 - 7:30pm - Memorial Building - Blumer Community Room

Monday, December 3 - 7:30pm - High School in the Cafeteria

Thursday, December 6 - 9:30am - Senior Center (535 Union Avenue)

Wednesday, December 12 - 7:30pm - Brophy School in the Library

See home through a tourist’s eyes

While vacationing at home last week, I took a Photo Walk tour of Beacon Hill. It was a fun way to see a local place from a traveler's perspective, finding out new things about oft-visited places and looking at familiar scenes with a new eye. (Last fall, I took a a guided walking tour of the North End and got a kick out of that as well). Not every neighborhood can be packed with architecture deserving of the National Register of Historic Places, of course. But in my book, you should be able to give a visitor a walking tour of your neighborhood -- if it's a livable (i.e. walkable) community.

Stops on most of our tours won't be homes of Revolutionary War heroes, graceful $12 million Victorian-era townhouses or stops on the Underground Railroad. Perhaps we won't have a cluster of world-class restaurants or cool, Old World markets. But we should be able to walk around and point out things of local interest -- even if those things are only of hyperlocal interest, and not likely to draw tourists who'd ever pay for your guided tour.

Here's our neighbor who always has a gorgeous garden out front. There's a local family-owned market that used to be a turkey farm, and has great ice cream in the summer. Kids love skating on that pond in the winter.

Could you take a visitor on a 60 minute stroll around your neighborhood, pointing out interesting sites? That's one way to see whether you're living in a walkable neighborhood with a sense of place.

By the way, if you want to see the results of my Beacon Hill Photo Walk, check out my photo gallery on SmugMug.

Speen Street’s crosswalk to nowhere: too bad we need to walk a hundred feet

My company has a cluster of buildings near the intersection of Speen Street and Old Connecticut Path, and people need to do a fair amount of walking between those buildings -- for meetings, and for lunch (not all the buildings have cafeterias). Unfortunately, there's not a sidewalk for the full stretch.

It's annoying and feels a bit unsafe most of the year; but when it's winter, that attempted walk becomes downright dangerous. With no sidewalks to shovel and plowed snow piled up, people need to walk in the narrow street amidst a steady stream of traffic, including a lot of turning cars. It's so bad that we may end up having to throw up our hands and tell people to take their cars the less than 100 feet between buildings. How insane is that? Why can't our town officials understand that walking isn't just for recreation; it's just as vital a form of transportation as driving! Nobody would put up with it if roads became impassable for cars for weeks at a time. Why do we allow that for walking?

Happily it's not snowing yet. Meanwhile, I took a short (less than 3 minutes) video of the issue. You can see the video on YouTube.


Some people at my company are valiantly trying to get some kind of help for this situation, we'll see if we get any relief.

Framingham Bicycle & Pedestrian Committee Meets Tuesday 11/13

From Chair William Hanson:

Framingham Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee
Conference Room 1
Memorial Building
150 Concord Street
Tuesday November 13, 2007 at 7:30 PM

Agenda
7:30 PM

-> Vote on meeting minutes
-> Review recent correspondence and media articles
-> Public comment

7:50 PM

-> Update on recent meetings: Downtown Rail Crossing, Open
Space and Recreation Plan, Cochituate Rail Trail,
Bruce Freeman Trail

8:15 PM

-> Review of the Moving Together 2007 bicycle and pedestrian
conference. Prepare any followup activities.

8:45 PM

-> Review the draft of the Massachusetts Bicycle Plan and any
comments submitted by FBPAC or other local bicyclists
http://www.massbikeplan.org/

Mayors highlight benefits of walkable cities

"Cities that are 'walkable,' workable and livable add up to the 's' word: sustainable. Cities that are centered on people and public transit, not cars, and built to higher standards of energy efficiency will save money, hum with new development and create jobs to suit a greener way of life."

--New York Times coverage of the U.S. Conference of Mayors' Climate Protection Summit

Walkability isn't just good for quality of life and the local economy; it also clearly makes environmental sense. However, some mayors say going green isn't the way to sell smarter development paterns. “You just can’t say we need to reduce global warming because there will be floods and polar bears will be gone,” said Mayor Douglas H. Palmer of Trenton, the Times reports. “They’ll run me out of town.”

Instead, he talks about pollution being bad for children's health, and energy waste driving up monthly heating bills.

Yet streetscapes with pedestrian appeal are clearly good for local economies. Notes the Times:

"The mayor of Fayetteville, Ark., gushed through a slide show about how his city was in the midst of great change. Bleak roads and bland shopping strips were being redrawn to a more human scale. Downtown condominiums were going for a million dollars. Streets once silent at night now bustled."

Good for the local economy, good for the environment, good for quality of life. It kind of makes you wonder why more American communities aren't insisting on pedestrian-friendly development, doesn't it?