Now that's good information. You could base a public-awareness campaign on that, and Cambridge has.
Luckily, the BPD isn't the only place to go for this kind of data. A public-records request for pedestrian crashes and their locations returned only annual totals. But using Boston EMS data, the Phoenix was able to ascertain the top five dicey intersections in the city (see sidebar, page 3), although there still was no reasonable way to separate bicyclists from pedestrians.
Taken as a whole, Mass Ave from Beacon Street to Melnea Cass Boulevard is definitely the most life-threatening gauntlet in the city — but more pedestrians get hit in Roxbury Crossing at Columbus Avenue and Tremont Street than at any other single spot in Boston. Forty-three people were hauled off that piece of pavement to local emergency rooms in the years 2002 to 2007, an average of one every two months. When the average one- or two-block area has a rate of .2 pedestrian hits per year, seven a year is fairly phenomenal.
All this data would mean even more, of course, if someone could say with authority how many are walking, biking, or rolling through these intersections. If there's more bike crashes in Central Square, for instance, that could just mean there are a hell of a lot of people biking through there. Cambridge does count cyclists at the same 20 locations each year, including Central Square, and that count has shown a 100 percent increase in cycling in the past six years. If the crash rate is holding steady or rising at a slower rate, these numbers could be seen as a positive.
In Portland, Oregon, for instance, where ridership over the city's bridges has increased by over 400 percent since 1991, according the city's figures, the number of reported bike crashes has risen by only 33 percent.
It's a mantra for the bicycling advocates. The more people ride, the safer it gets.
But, truthfully, in Portland, NYC, and Holland — all places where this safety-in-numbers phenomenon has been shown — every attention has been paid to improving safety with road design.
So it follows that Boston, as it gets praise for trying to shake its "worst bicycling city" designation (according to Bicycling magazine) by finding ways to get people on bikes, will also have to show concern about how people are getting knocked off of them in order to succeed.
Pete Stidman is a freelance writer living in Dorchester. He can be reached atstidman@gmail.com.
Top 5 pedestrian/cyclist danger zones in Boston*
1) Roxbury Crossing | 43 hit-pedestrian ambulance runs, an average of a little more than one per every two months | Deceptively simple looking. Try to cross it at high speed and you may be done for, as cars cruise down Columbus like it’s a highway.
2) Mass Ave at the intersections of both Melnea Cass Boulevard and Albany Street | 38 hit-pedestrian ambulance runs | The site of a still-unresolved controversy over whether to put bike lanes, there’s plenty of reason to paint them. Between here and the Mass Ave bridge over the Charles, there were an additional 156 ambulance runs for hit pedestrians and cyclists from 2002 to 2007.
3) Dudley Street, where Warren and Harrison cross (Dudley Square) | 25 hit-pedestrian ambulance runs | Anyone
who cruises through this area on a regular basis has a healthy heart, otherwise they wouldn’t be reading this. The tight corners and narrow sidewalks in many spots mean you can’t see what’s coming until it’s bearing down on you.
4) Kenmore Square | 24 hit-pedestrian ambulance runs | Tricky from every one of the six ways you can enter it. At least the MBTA construction is beginning to die down — no more dodging backhoes, for now.
5)Uphams Corner | 23 hit-pedestrian ambulance runs | The thrill- seekers bomb this section coming downhill from Columbia. First, there’s a merge with traffic from Hancock, then the main intersection with Dudley and Stoughton, which has a hidden inlet from a parking lot. Pedestrians cross anywhere, so go heavy on the brakes.
Top 5 bicycle crash locations in Cambridge
1) Central Square | 48 crashes, 31 injuries | One of these crashes, in 2002, killed Dana Laird, a student at Tufts’s Fletcher School. While riding in the bike lane, she swerved to avoid and possibly hit an unexpectedly opened SUV door, then fell under a moving MBTA bus.
2) Porter Square | 26 crashes, 18 injuries | Another complicated meeting of several roads coming in at strange angles. Almost all of the crashes in this area are along Mass Ave’s northbound side in the six or seven blocks preceding the square.
3) Inman Square | 19 crashes, 12 injuries | A busy area for bars and restaurants means many distractions. Most accidents occur at the intersection of Hampshire and Cambridge Streets, or along Cambridge Street.
4) Hampshire Street, between Windsor and Prospect Streets | 15 crashes, 11 injuries | Hampshire Street is second only to Mass Ave as a major bike corridor in Cambridge, according to the city’s traffic department, and this is where it gets hairy. It does, however, have a bike lane.
5) Intersection of Mass Ave, Mt. Auburn, Putnam, and Trowbridge Streets | 15 crashes, 11 injuries | Mass Ave gets pretty narrow through this complicated but timid-looking crossing. Watch out when flying through here westward — one little unexpected door or pedestrian and you could fly into the traffic behind you.
*As determined by the Massachusetts Highway Department, using 2002 to 2007 crash-location data.
