Around the malls on foot

The direct route would be about a mile, past the landmark Shoppers World and Natick Collection malls, but confusing crossings, dead-end sidewalks, a lack of signs and faulty signals extend the trek and remind walkers they’re not welcome almost every step of the way.

"This is the typical pedestrian experience," said Carol Spack, chairwoman of the Framingham Planning Board, as she recently prepared to cross the intersection of Cochituate Road (Route 30) and Whittier Street, the meeting place of 23 traffic lanes feeding the shopping meccas and the Mass. Turnpike ramps a quarter-mile away. "This is the perception of Framingham most people passing through see."

As she and Mark Racicot, from the Metropolitan Area Regional Planning Council, accompanied by a Globe West correspondent, were midway across Whittier, the signal changed from a white, walking stick figure to a red hand of warning. They were stuck at the median, behind a thin concrete Jersey barrier, as the traffic lights turned green and the cars started zooming by.

"You're a little protected because you're behind something, but there's really no safety," said Racicot, manager of the regional planning group's land use division. "It would be nice if there were a wider refuge."

Spack was less generous. "I don't think it's acceptable," she said.

The walking tour came as Framingham and Natick officials are trying to make the retail sprawl of Route 9 more pedestrian-friendly with better sidewalks, benches, and other amenities. More exercise, reduced exhaust pollution, enhanced street life, and less time-consuming traffic congestion would result if people walked, rather than got in their cars, every time they wanted to move between adjacent shopping areas, proponents said.

"It's more important every single day that we provide people with better pedestrian facilities than we've had up to date," said Patrick Reffett, Natick’s director of community development. "If you don’t provide people with these things, what do they have? You have eliminated a possibility for them to walk at all. That to me is unsafe and unreasonable."

It's possible now to walk between the malls and big-box stores in the so-called Golden Triangle retail conglomeration. But the routes around the plazas and other facilities, such as the Logan Express bus service on Shopper's World Drive, aren't obvious to anyone on foot.

The streets channel pedestrians to the closest stores instead of destinations outside the property's boundaries, for example. Sidewalks are circuitous. Signs are directed almost exclusively to motorists, including the approximately 110,000 drivers that the state Highway Department says travel Route 9 every day. As a result, walkers sometimes make their own shortcuts.

As Spack and Racicot ambled southeast toward Sherwood Plaza, they encountered Lyudmila Goldenstein, who was walking on the street as she made her way to the Marshalls store in Shoppers World. She bypasses the sidewalk, she said, because it doesn't follow a straight line. Instead, it takes a wide turn around a large beech tree that Racicot said had probably been saved years ago from bulldozers by a developer’s agreement.

"In the winter, I always go around," staying on the sidewalk, said Goldenstein, a Framingham resident who lives about a mile from Shoppers World. "I didn't see any cars today, so I went straight, on the street."

A few months ago, the Framingham Planning Board adopted a policy requiring developers to mitigate not only vehicular traffic generated by their projects, but also the impacts on walkers like Goldenstein.

"The emphasis as long as I've been involved is roads, roads, roads," said Spack. "Now we are going to make sure every development includes an allocation of money for pedestrians."

Earlier this month, for example, the board granted approval to Newton-Wellesley Hospital's proposed surgical center in the former CompUSA store at 500 Cochituate Road, perhaps 400 feet from the Whittier intersection, on the condition that the builders include improving the parcel's sidewalks as part of a $123,000 mitigation package, she said.

Support for such requirements grew on the Planning Board after it successfully required a Lowe's home store to add benches and sidewalk improvements to its parcel at 350 Cochituate Road a few years ago. "That was the first example of us trying to create some places for walkers," said Spack.

Natick officials are studying how to help make two major intersections pedestrian-friendly, said Reffett. Using a $700,000 state grant, they are redesigning Route 9's intersection with Route 27, perhaps 2 miles east of Shoppers World, to include a new bridge. With an expected price tag of $17 million, Reffett said, the project should make it easier to cross the two roads on foot when it is completed. "Right now it has abysmal pedestrian facilities," he said.

Another 1.5 miles to the east, the intersection of Route 9 and Oak Street is slated for an overhaul that could cost $3.4 million, and officials are designing ways to make the busy crossing more navigable for walkers and bikers, Reffett said.

Natick Police Lieutenant Brian Lauzon agrees that the intersections along Route 9 are dangerous, but said no pedestrians have been struck by cars while trying to cross them in recent memory, mostly because few people are foolhardy enough to try. "It's not a very inviting area," he said.

No serious accidents have occurred on Route 9 in Framingham this year, but one person was struck and suffered minor leg injuries at routes 9 and 126 last year, said Police Lieutenant Stephen Cronin. In 2007, cars struck four people on the road, fatally injuring one elderly woman.

After reaching Sherwood Plaza and turning north to start the return route around the Natick Collection, the walking tour had to bolt across Route 9 at Dean Road because the crosswalk signal was stuck on the red hand, even as cars waited for a few minutes at the stoplight. But once on the other side, both Spack and Racicot approved of the walkways and bikeways that encircle the new mall. They found the return trip to Shopper's World Drive and the Framingham Mall to be much easier on the Natick Collection's paths. "This is the first new concept on Route 9 in a long time," Spack said.

The Natick Collection proved that good planning could produce convenient walking routes, said Racicot. But the mall was recently constructed, he noted. Other parts of the Golden Triangle would likely need to wait until builders replaced old stores before they were also equipped with walks, trails, and pedestrian-friendly signs.

"It's obvious the most recent developments got better in terms of pedestrian access," said Racicot. "The land is here to be redeveloped and improved. It's not blocked in."