Walsh expedites redesign of dangerous intersection
Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh has accelerated a redesign of the dangerous Back Bay intersection where a 38-year-old surgeon was hit by a truck and killed weeks ago, having a protected bike lane installed to make for a safer mix of bikes, buses and automobiles, city officials told the Herald.
Vineet Gupta, director of planning at the Boston Transportation Department, said the city pushed the Massachusetts Avenue and Beacon Street project to the top of its list in response to the death of Anita Kurmann, a Swiss surgeon and postdoc who was run over by a flatbed truck the morning of Aug. 7.
“After the incident, even though the repaving of the intersection was on the list, we advanced it to do it slightly sooner,” Gupta said. “Fundamentally, we want to make it clear to those people who are on bicycles and motorists as well as to where they should pull up when they reach the intersection.”
Crews milled the intersection’s roadways earlier this week, and repaved the surfaces yesterday.
Gupta said new lane markings will be painted and a bike lane protected by a row of flexi-poles would be installed in the coming days. To make room for the bike lane, the bus stop on the southbound side of Massachusetts Avenue will be moved south near Marlborough Street.
“If you’re on a bike, when you’re coming over the Harvard Bridge you will have a continuous bike lane until Beacon Street,” Gupta said.
Heading south on Massachusetts Avenue, the intersection is a free-for-all. The bike lane that leads riders over the Harvard Bridge disappears as it approaches Beacon Street. Buses press to the right side of it to hit a bus stop. And cars vie to turn left or right onto Beacon Street.
Mike Wissell, sales manager at Back Bay Bicycles a few blocks from the intersection, said bike lanes are a definite improvement but it’s attentive driving that’s needed most.
“It really comes down to common sense and honestly paying attention. If you’re driving in the city, honestly you can’t have any reasonable expectation to go anywhere quickly,” Wissell said. “It’s very easy to come across as bitter and sort of shrill about this sort of thing, but it is people’s lives.”
Gupta said the quick fixes to the intersection would be replaced as the city’s transportation department completes a design re-do of the Massachusetts Avenue corridor.
A 2013 study of biking safety in Boston, launched by then-Mayor Thomas M. Menino after a streak of five biking fatalities, highlighted the intersection of Massachusetts Ave and Beacon Street as a hot spot for collisions.