Dean Toulan hit the new crosswalk button at Armandine and Washington streets that was installed by the city in the Codman Square neighborhood a few weeks ago and waited for the signal to change.

The crosswalk has special meaning for Toulan, a resident of Armandine Street, who months ago sent a message to city government about his concerns for pedestrian safety after he was nearly hit by a driver trying to run a red light at the corner in November. The fact that there was no button on one side of the crossing was one safety issue that Toulan cited in a series of emails to city officials.

Toulan spoke to The Dorchester Reporter in February about the lack of pedestrian infrastructure along the Washington Street corridor, which is used as a thoroughfare by students, parents and children at TechBoston Academy, the Dorchester YMCA, Roberts Playground and Ashmont Nursery School, where a driver alleged to have had an invalid license, a loaded gun, and drugs in his vehicle crashed into the side of the building in January. 

Days after The Reporter published the article on pedestrian safety, including Toulan’s complaints, a city neighborhood liaison contacted the newspaper to connect with him. Now, the city has proposed fixing the issues he raised over time, beginning with minor tweaks and escalating toward major changes.

“I think a lot of people don’t know where to start, or they feel overwhelmed, and even if you get to a certain point, what if you don’t send the invite?” Toulan said. “What if that doesn’t happen because I didn’t push?”

Members of the Office of Neighborhood Services and other city officials, including City Councilor Brian Worrell, joined Toulan for a site walk on March 11 to examine intersections along the corridor and determine what to do.

They suggested the work would begin with simple improvements, such as repainting crosswalks and installing new signage if needed. More significant improvements, such as traffic signaling changes, would need to involve multiple city departments. Major changes — curb bump-outs, new traffic islands on the road — would come last.

Toulan said he is optimistic that the city is willing to move forward on the project, but it took months of emails and receiving minimal responses before there was any significant movement. Following the article and the city’s initial contact with him, Toulan emailed multiple times before finally inviting officials to a site walk.

The Office of Neighborhood Services did not respond to The Reporter’s repeated requests for an interview. Toulan has yet to receive a formal message about what the government will do next, but he hopes the city will act quickly — not for his sake, but for the elderly and young children who use the crosswalks daily to get from one place to the next.

“It’s about safety and making an ideal environment for that volume of foot traffic,” Toulan said.  “Why not just do it all right, once? Why do it halfway? And I think that this is an area that deserves a lot more than halfway, because we’re not even getting that.”

•••

A walk along Washington Street; a near miss at Armandine

The first thing Dean Toulan points out are two spots on the road flanking Armandine Street. There used to be pylons to discourage drivers from cutting too close to the sidewalks.“It’s actually better that they’re not there anymore,” he said. “They’re just going to get run over again.”

What hasn’t been replaced and should be, Toulan said, are the words painted in white that are meant to alert drivers: “20 MPH SLOW ZONE.” The paint on the road was not redone after Armandine Street was uprooted to install a natural gas line. That project also stripped the crosswalk of half of its paint.

Toulan gestures to a bus stop that two cars are using as parking spaces. The stop, which services the students and elderly in the area who take the No. 26 bus, is marked by a weathered wooden bench. There is no bus shelter. As we wait for the crosswalk light to change, one of the cars pulls out of the stop and drives away. Less than 30 seconds later, another car takes its place. 

Toulan said that the bus has to stop in the middle of the road to pick up passengers. There is nowhere else for it to go.
He continues one block down Washington Street, stopping in front of the Ashmont Nursery School at the Ashmont Street intersection. There are plywood boards covering the side where a driver ran through the building in January.

As we make our way back to Washington and Armandine, Toulan is talking about a bus stop that was never replaced when he breaks off mid-sentence and lunges toward the crosswalk, grabbing the shoulder of a boy on a scooter and stopping him from riding into the path of a red sedan making a curving turn onto Armandine, barely stopping.

The boy’s mother, another kid beside her and one more in a stroller, catches up to her son. Toulan waved off her thanks and the family continued on through the intersection. He sighed, shook his head, and spots one of his neighbors and waves, pointing at the traffic.

They laugh about it. It’s just another day.

This story is part of a partnership between the Dorchester Reporter and the Boston University Department of Journalism.