Boston City Council President Andrea Campbell said she’s hoping to invest more financial resources into traffic safety, an issue that has become a major talking point across the city.
Campbell said a council hearing last week was a wake up call: To make Boston’s street’s safer, it will take more than the slower speed limits proposed by Mayor Marty Walsh.
“What came out of that hearing is: They need more resources, they need more support to be able to do this,” Campbell said in an interview with Boston Public Radio Tuesday. “So in the next budget round, we need to make sure that we're investing in that so that they can do better enforcement and hopefully make our lives all a lot better."
Safer streets has taken on new urgency following the recent traffic-related deaths of a toddler in South Boston, a pedestrian in West Roxbury and a bicyclist in the Fenway.
At the hearing last Tuesday, Boston city councilors heard testimony from public officials and citizens of Greater Boston.
“There was a gentleman who testified, he had just come back from New York, and he felt like walking down the street in New York was safer than walking here,” Campbell said. “We had an ER doctor at [Boston Medical Center] who also suffered an accident when she was riding her bike to work who said, 'You get folks to respond for street cleaning quicker. Towing cars is a process, a routine, and yet the same response doesn't seem to exist if someone's getting hit on their bike or walking down the street.'”
Campbell said the issue has taken on a renewed importance. “That sense of urgency is there,” she said, “[and] we have to respond to it adequately.”
