Last week, the Brandeis community received an email from Director of Public Safety Ed Callahan detailing measures to combat unsafe driving on university roads. Official actions were long overdue. However, the actions proposed by Callahan do not accomplish enough to keep our roadways safe.
Loop Road has a posted speed limit of 15 miles per hour, which is largely ignored. The lack of good lighting and forward visibility only increases the hazard factor of speeding on the street, which is heavily traversed by pedestrians who don’t always pay attention to their surroundings. Down on the heavily crossed parts of South Street, it’s even darker, and there aren’t any traffic signals to slow down the traffic. This is the case from the train station all the way to the end of campus beyond Gosman.
At two locations on South Street, pedestrians must hit a button that illuminates a flashing sign that warns drivers that people will be crossing the street. During the day, this won’t be a problem for an attentive driver and a watchful pedestrian, but at night this is just not a safe avenue for crossing. It is easier for drivers to ignore the flashing lights, especially when it is difficult to see pedestrians if they aren’t wearing reflectors. This increases the chances of incidents that could cause serious injury and damage.
On campus, pedestrians wishing to walk to and from areas of campus on the other side of South Street heavily frequent a crosswalk that spans Loop Road behind the science complex on toward Squire Bridge. Vehicles approaching from the main gate of the university must go uphill to reach this area, and they slow down upon reaching the crosswalk. In such a heavily frequented part of campus that lacks good lighting and visibility, there is definitely a need for more rigorous vehicle safety regulations.
At a university that collects as much money as it does from its students, unsafe roadways should never be a problem. Enforcing road safety regulations does not require a whole lot of money, and students should be entitled to safe roadways. Yet according to Callahan, “Public Safety receives complaints almost daily about speeding vehicles and near accidents with pedestrians and bicyclists.”
Although measures were put in place to combat this problem, they were provisional ones—experiments. You’ll notice that the temporary speed bumps, installed even before Callahan sent the email, are not there anymore. The experiment in safety has been conducted, and the old conditions have returned in the interim while the data is analyzed. Meanwhile, the old conditions have not gotten any better, and the dangers posed in this situation are still very real.
We find ourselves in this situation today because the efficacy of stalling tactics disintegrates when the situation presents real consequences. In addition to the near misses seen daily around campus roadways, cars have hit students—real people—as recently as last semester. The administration could pretend the problem didn’t exist until they couldn’t anymore, and that’s why we’re seeing some sort of response now. Even so, the response is inadequate, and a permanent solution is beyond simple.
The roadways need some simple updating: increased lighting on South Street and especially on Loop Road, along with permanent speed bumps on both roads. South Street could definitely use some traffic signals, but a little more lighting and decreased speed will go a long way towards diminishing risk even without the signals.
To say this would be a cost-effective job would be an understatement, especially given how much the university accrues on a yearly basis. It’s a simple job that could easily be done over short breaks or over the gaps between the semesters. In the name of safety, it is imperative that immediate action be taken to ensure safety for anyone and everyone who finds themselves on our grounds. The Department of Public Safety is finally getting on the right track, but there’s still a long road ahead of us.
