Two Different Languages

Seven years ago, 7-year-old Destiny Gonzalez was killed while crossing State Street in Springfield, Massachusetts. She was fatally struck while walking between the exit to Springfield’s Central Library and the parking lot, which is directly across the street. I made this tragedy the focus of my most recent book, Confessions of a Recovering Engineer.

At Strong Towns, we’ve subsequently written about this crossing many times, including a 2017 open letter to Springfield’s mayor, city council, and senior staff. In that letter, we offered to work pro bono to help them redesign State Street to make it safer. In the absence of such an intervention, we offered to work pro bono as an expert witness on behalf of the next family who had a loved one killed at this crossing.

While dozens of people walking and biking have been killed by motor vehicles on State Street since Destiny Gonzalez, last month, Gayle Ball, a librarian at the Central Library, was killed in the same place and in the same manner as Destiny was killed back in 2014. This was a senseless tragedy. If you would, provide her some humanity by taking a moment to read her obituary (she was a very interesting and accomplished woman) and then this story about her recent wedding. Gayle Ball is a statistic in an ongoing tragedy, but—like Destiny Gonzalez—she was also a person who had hopes, dreams, and many people who loved her.

By choosing to do nothing in the face of overwhelming evidence that their current design of State Street was dangerous, the city of Springfield demonstrated a conscious indifference to the safety of Springfield’s residents. In other words, the city is grossly negligent. That negligence, in the face of an obvious and broadly documented hazard, is going to cost Springfield many times the amount they believed they were saving by ignoring it.

Sadly, once again, the cost of that negligence will not be paid by the public officials who made these decisions. It will be paid by the residents of Springfield, first in a low quality of life as their neighborhoods are turned into drag strips, then in lives lost, and now likely in a very large legal settlement. Springfield’s residents continue to be poorly served by this system.

And “served” is a term I use loosely. In reaction to Gayle Ball being killed, the Springfield Police Department was theatrically dispatched to send a message. That message: Drivers, your reckless behavior will no longer be tolerated. Note that, if your police department can issue 40 citations in three hours along one stretch of street, it’s not the people driving who are at fault. It is the design of State Street that invites people to drive at excessive speeds.

State Street in Springfield, Massachusetts. September 2019. Source: Google Maps

State Street in Springfield was designed to move traffic quickly and efficiently through the core of the city, regardless of other concerns. The design intentionally ignores the complexity and randomness of people walking, biking, and moving around outside of a vehicle. And when a tragedy does occur, the standard list of causes—speeding, intoxication, recklessness—conveniently avoids professional introspection. This situation is not unique to Springfield, but State Street is a particularly egregious example.

Beyond the flex of three hours of safety theater, there are now real changes being pursued. City council members and Springfield residents participated in a meeting with Springfield’s Director of Public Works. It was a case study in miscommunication, and I did my best to interpret what each party was saying in terms the other could understand.

To summarize, elected officials and the public were emphatically stating, over and over, that the system that produced State Street, and has resisted any changes, is broken and they want immediate action to address the situation. The staff responded by saying—in generally polite though somewhat opaque terms (which is why I provided an interpretation)—that they don’t work for the elected officials, they work for a system, and that system requires a process to keep them all safe from liability.

Last week, it seemed like the forces of change might get their way. On December 7, a day that lives in infamy, the city held a press briefing to lay out changes to State Street. As I recommended in Confessions of a Recovering Engineer, the four-lane street is being reduced to two lanes, correctly prioritizing humans in the place over the speed and volume of through traffic. A raised crosswalk in front of the library, along with a user-activated stop light, will make crossing the reduced distance of a two-lane State Street even easier.

That’s the proposal, and it sounds promising, but count me aligned with the skeptics. I’ll believe it when I see it. In the article, the director of public works stated that, “the city still needs to study the impact on traffic before it comes up with a final design.” Old habits are hard to break.

While public officials debated the scope and timing of action to be taken on State Street, another of the worst kind of tragedy happened. On December 8, a 16-year-old girl was struck and killed on State Street. As I wrote in 2014, just another pedestrian killed. I’m sure the official report will place the blame on some decision made by this little girl, or someone else’s recklessness, shamefully avoiding the difficult questions that would explain why State Street is killing so many people.

Springfield’s leaders fiddle while Rome burns. How much longer do they need to study the impact on their precious traffic flow before something is done to care for their people?

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