Poorly timed traffic lights have contributed to traffic congestion in Dudley Square, but city officials say significant improvements have been made to the signals in recent weeks.
(Christina Pazzanese for the Boston Globe)
Globe Watch
Driver frustrated by Dudley Square traffic
Poorly timed traffic lights have contributed to traffic congestion in Dudley Square, but city officials say significant improvements have been made to the signals in recent weeks.
(Christina Pazzanese for the Boston Globe)
Can't get there from here. Or rather, you can get there from here, but it's going to take a lot more time than it should.
Tipster Rhonda Kaplan of Hyde Park wrote to GlobeWatch in December to ask why traffic in Roxbury's Dudley Square seems to be perpetually slow-moving. She suspected it may have to do with a series of traffic signals that seem to work against drivers.
"Every Wednesday I leave my work at the Dever Elementary School [near Bayside Expo] and I am shocked by how quickly I can get to my son's school on Marlborough Street once I go over the 4th Street bridge and cross Albany Street. When I travel the length of Berkeley Street, all the way from Albany to Beacon, the lights are in synch and it takes about 5 minutes. However, when I want to travel through Dudley Square, the lights are a mess and it takes at least 10 minutes to get through the lights at Shawmut, Washington, and Harrison. Why is that? Can someone please fix the mess in Dudley, or at least give a plausible explanation that does not involve oppression?"
The square is a heavily congested business district with a busy MBTA bus terminus, police station, and post office wedged amid a sometimes confusing maze of narrow, one-way streets that can make driving pretty slow-going.
The area is also a popular shortcut for Dorchester, Roslindale, and Hyde Park drivers heading in and out of downtown Boston. On a recent visit by a Globe reporter, morning traffic along Malcolm X Boulevard and Dudley Street was light because of the Evacuation Day and St. Patrick's Day holidays.
The four traffic signals Kaplan writes about at Shawmut, Washington Street, Warren Street, and Harrison Avenue were not completely in synch, but it appeared most cars could make it through at least two sets of lights before hitting a red again.
The city responds
"We expect that your reader may now be more pleased with the flow of traffic in the vicinity of Dudley Square as, in recent weeks, BTD has made significant improvements to these traffic signals," writes Tracey Ganiatsos, spokeswoman for the Boston Transportation Department. "First, the existing traffic signals have been brought online and, as a result, traffic signal changes can be made directly from the city's Traffic Management Center in City Hall rather than having to rely on site visits from staff. Furthermore a traffic camera has been installed at the intersection of Dudley and Washington streets to allow the Traffic Engineering Division to monitor traffic flow and make real-time adjustments as necessary.""In addition, area traffic signals have just recently been retimed as part of a traffic signal retiming initiative begun in 2008 to ease traffic congestion citywide," said Ganiatsos. "The ongoing initiative has been implemented in segments. Sixty intersections in the Back Bay were the first to be retimed as part of the program. Before-and-after studies of these intersections showed that the adjustments resulted in a reduction in traffic delays up to 29 [percent]," she said. "Finally, we have had a persistent problem with the malfunctioning of equipment at the intersection of Shawmut Avenue and Malcolm X Boulevard, which is resulting in the signals going off-line repeatedly. BTD will soon be installing a new controller at that location to rectify the issue."
WHO'S IN CHARGE
Thomas J. Tinlin
Commissioner
Boston Transportation Department
1 City Hall Square, Room 721
Boston, MA 02201-2026
617-635-4680
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.
