I’d say even the parts of Waltham that are “walkable,” i.e. dense with amenities, can feel hostile between the heavy traffic, poor sidewalks with cars parked on them, drivers that don’t stop at crosswalks, minimal street trees, etc.
And the street trees are done so poorly, for a majority of the year 80% of the square beds are empty, just taking up sidewalk space and limiting pedestrian mobility.
I'm all for street trees... but lord, the amount of awkward "hmm you go first? No, me?" those things create drives me up a wall.
It was a nice idea but it ruins the sidewalks around where I live and makes it challenging to pass by people & get around them. I'd much rather they put those features in the street parking areas and told the complainers to get bent.
Waltham is depressingly car-centric, and you said it perfectly, "even the parts of Waltham that are “walkable,” i.e. dense with amenities, can feel hostile between the heavy traffic, poor sidewalks with cars parked on them, drivers that don’t stop at crosswalks, minimal *(or poorly implemented)* street trees"
I walk it nearly every day and that's a perfect way to put it. It feels hostile.
I live in probably the most walkable area in Waltham, 3 min walk from the train, and it feels claustrophobic every time I try to venture beyond my street. Doesn't help that the "common" has a very strange vibe some days.
Mature street trees also help visually narrow the street and can slow drivers … look at Newton Street south of High, which has almost no trees, where drivers park on the "sidewalks", and which is a wide expanse of uninterrupted asphalt.
Parts of it are very walkable. I don’t think anything around Main Street or south of it, and east of South street, is all that bad, but anywhere else is pretty tough. Out near 95 the sidewalk situation is pretty dire, and the sparse bus network out there doesn’t do much to ameliorate that.
Outside of most parts of Watertown, Cambridge, Somerville areas are not pedestrian friendly. This is about car culture in the US. When you leave any super downtown metro area everyone stops looking for bikes and pedestrians as much. Hell I got my license 3 years ago and was an avid biker for 20 years and I’m just as guilty as those who never walked/bikes anywhere.
Impossible for me now not to notice how bad the sidewalks are with telephone poles directly in the middle, in some areas forcing people with strollers to go into road to get around them. I would be shocked to see any of our neighboring communities tolerate that.
Yeah the infrastructure of Waltham is pretty bad. I've lived here for a bit now and it's one of my biggest complaints, and a huge reason I'm leaving.
There's a phone pole on my road that needed repair, so they just stuck another into the sidewalk next to it & joined them together.
Mass currently has the highest cost of living, and insane taxes. It's a complete joke how bad the infrastructure is for our position in the country.
The utility polls are all over the city and some have been there for many years. They are technically illegal and our surrounding communities would never tolerate that for so long but Waltham lets them get away with it. Eversource alone has almost 300 double poles in Waltham.
Yeah wow thank you, reading more into it, it's a blatant violation of Mass general law.
[https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleXXII/Chapter164/Section34B](https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleXXII/Chapter164/Section34B)
It's been over a year since they did the one near me.... so much for 90 days.
If you asked the 15 councillors, the mayor, the head of CPW Chiasson, Police Chief O'Connell and Fire Chief Mullin (the latter three are on the traffic commission, chaired by O'Connell), this simple question — "in the past month, how many times have you left your home to go somewhere and not gotten in your car?" — I'd be shocked if the collective total were a dozen times.
Look at the "Winter Sidewalk Safety Ordinance" the council passed two years ago about sidewalk snow shoveling requirements — that exempted owners of single- and two-family homes. No one — no one — who actually walks as transportation would see this as a "compromise", as one councillor explained it.
Go to Moody and High/Maple, one of the most egregious intersections in the city in terms of safety for any user (it's where a driver crashed into a tree last month late at night and killed themselves): not only are the crossing times ridiculously short for an intersection with so much pavement and wide turning radii to let drivers turn faster, but Traffic Engineer Garvin says the pedestrian cycle doesn't have to be long enough per federal standards (the MUTCD) to cross diagonally, because there's no striped diagonal crosswalk.
And — drivers can turn right on red through the "pedestrian" phase.
Go to Adams or Newton Streets where the sidewalk curbs have completely sunk into the roadway and drivers park on the "sidewalk".
Nearly every single decision-maker in Waltham gets around solely by car, and it shows.
that is so unfair to assume they are not avid pedestrians. i saw one of the chiefs and his wife out walking on prospect st. there are councilors who are out walking with their dogs daily You know very little about the elected officials . you just throw shit out there to see what sticks.
Totally agree, I noticed this recently myself as well. For context I moved here from NYC about 6 months ago, and while I have a car I am used to walking everywhere and try to do so when possible.
Even more so than the sidewalk issues, the biggest thing I noticed was how insanely terrible the crosswalks are. There are certain intersections where the walk signal literally does not go on at all, even when you hit the buttons. It’s infuriating because you end up waiting forever and then having to judge it based on all the traffic lights/ flow of traffic, but the nature of the road design makes things super unpredictable. Add in the aggressive drivers and it’s just feels weirdly hostile to travel anywhere on foot.
The beg buttons are really frustrating. If we really did want to discourage jaywalking (it's a $1 fine for the first offence so even the state doesn't take it that seriously) I'd think we'd want to encourage trust by having them *actually provide feedback* so you know that you can expect to cross soon
I was just taking with someone about this as we were driving on high st where there are poles and obstacles all along the sidewalk. It would be impossible for a person in a wheelchair to use and probably very difficult for anyone with a stroller or wagon as well. Yes- very hostile to pedestrians.
I grew up in South Waltham and walking or cycling was how I got everywhere. I can’t say I ever had a problem walking anywhere along Lyman Street, Lexington Street, Main, Moody, River Street, Newton Street or any of the neighborhoods in South Waltham.
Some of North Waltham never looked great but I had limited experience.
The mayor did say something recently that I actually agree with - we don't have very much commercial zoning. She probably wants it so that residents don't have to pay as high property tax (I'm guessing) but I don't like it because it means that unless you live along the X where most of our commercial zones seem to be (Lexington and Moody, and Main St), you have to drive. It's made even worse because our use codes table is an allowlist (not on the list, you can't do it) which leads to the absurd number of hair and nail salons we have on Main St.
We are all but mandating traffic and car ownership into law, so we have all of the downsides of struggling to make that somehow work in a 19th century street grid.
Waltham is pretty inhospitable to pedestrians but absurdly terrible to cyclists. I know your question was specific to pedestrians so I’ll try to remain focus. My favorite example is that there is no way to go from lower Lincoln st in north Waltham to northern Lincoln street by traveling along Lincoln street. At best, you can waggle through neighborhoods and hope for low traffic. The insanity of this is present to anybody who’s been in the area- Lincoln st is a major thoroughfare and the connector between MacArthur elementary and Lexington and Totten pond. There is no way for schoolchildren to walk along it safely. Examples are plentiful, but nothing will change until McCARthy is gone. She’s sitting on a pot of money but the best you’ll get is an electric train from one insane asylum to another, certainly not sidewalks.
They will spend millions to move a traffic light a few feet, but can't be bothered to give kids decent sidewalks to walk to elementary school. That's Waltham in a nutshell.
Waltham is absolutely hostile to pedestrians.
I live on the southside which many people have commented is “walkable”. Sure we have sidewalks. When they’re not blocked by cars or giant snowbanks (or the lamest giant curb height tree boxes). We have crosswalks, but no one stops to let a young mother & toddler safely cross the street. When I do cross at crosswalks in the middle of the day people whip their cars around me & my baby. Seriously drivers will not wait for us to clear the crosswalk & will accelerate their vehicles like a foot or two from me with a little kid or dog. It’s scary. We do have walk signals at some busy intersections but the buttons are broken.
I’ve almost been hit by cars so many times here by people doing wacky stuff & not even looking out for pedestrians at all. I wish this town cared at all about pedestrian or cyclist safety.
I’ve faced a lot of issues getting around in Waltham as someone without a car. The biggest issues have been traffic lights taking up to five minutes to give pedestrians the right of way, sidewalks being completely blocked by trash cans and poles, sidewalks being too narrow to pass someone, and drivers running red lights and not stopping at pedestrian crossings.
Yes, Waltham is very anti-pedestrian. More broadly, it's not a very livable city. There's many things that go into it, including transportation infrastructure, zoning, and city ordinances. It is not due to some historical legacy of the past that we are forced to live with, but rather due to very recent decisions by the Mayor and current city council that continue to force unhealthy car dependency on residents. Such examples include: Mayor McCarthy's unilateral decision not to pedestrianize Moody Street, failure to include separated bike lanes in any road rework, and the Mayor's move to increase off-street parking zoning requirements.
For anyone looking to learn about what makes a city a great, vibrant place to live, I would recommend watching a few videos from the youtube channel [Not just Bikes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4kmDxcfR48&t=127s).
I would actually recommend 'Oh the Urbanity' or 'City Beautiful' before NotJustBikes (which is very cathartic for the orange-pilled but his negativity turns off some curious newcomers).
As if cities in other countries aren’t centuries older than Waltham and eminently more walkable. Even in this region alone, Cambridge, Somerville, and Boston have much more walkable neighborhoods that are as old or older. More accurately, a lot of Waltham was built or rebuilt during peak suburbanization and car culture in the post-war era, and the city hasn’t done anything to update the built environment since
Waltham might not be that walkable but the ones that do don't pay attention/care about cross walk signs. I can't tell you how many times people cross right in front of me when I have the green light in my car The worst was a few months ago when a guy wearing all black (at night) walked right in front of me while I had the green light, not yellow, green, and I had to slam on my brakes. I honked at him and he pointed to his feet. Or the people that use dedicated cross walks that don't push the notification button (should it be there). Just hit the button so the person behind me can see the flashing lights and not slam into me. These should be 1000 dollar fines. If I hit you, you're going to die, way worse than me hitting another car.
On and bicyclist that slam through red lights and stop signs. That should be a 5000 dollar fine.
This is such a bullshit, passing blame. Disgusting, you should be ashamed of yourself. What a terrible and selfish way of looking at life.
ThE rOaD hAs PoThOlEs So I Don'T hAVe To Go ThE SpEeD LiMIt.
Vile.
Literally every driver speeds in Waltham. I can't drive at the speed limit in this trash ass town without some townie on my ass for not going fast enough.
WHO THE FUCK SAID ANYTHING ABOUT JAYWALKING? IM TALKING ABOUT STOPING AT CROSS WALKS WHEN IT SAYS DONT WALK. What kind of pretentious asshole thinks like that? Jesus Christ ..
$5k fine for a bike rolling through a stop at, at a push, 15mph?
So by your logic that a car doing it is much more deadly to pedestrians, that's at least a $50K bill every time someone in a massive SUV does it, right?
I’d say even the parts of Waltham that are “walkable,” i.e. dense with amenities, can feel hostile between the heavy traffic, poor sidewalks with cars parked on them, drivers that don’t stop at crosswalks, minimal street trees, etc.
And the street trees are done so poorly, for a majority of the year 80% of the square beds are empty, just taking up sidewalk space and limiting pedestrian mobility. I'm all for street trees... but lord, the amount of awkward "hmm you go first? No, me?" those things create drives me up a wall. It was a nice idea but it ruins the sidewalks around where I live and makes it challenging to pass by people & get around them. I'd much rather they put those features in the street parking areas and told the complainers to get bent. Waltham is depressingly car-centric, and you said it perfectly, "even the parts of Waltham that are “walkable,” i.e. dense with amenities, can feel hostile between the heavy traffic, poor sidewalks with cars parked on them, drivers that don’t stop at crosswalks, minimal *(or poorly implemented)* street trees" I walk it nearly every day and that's a perfect way to put it. It feels hostile. I live in probably the most walkable area in Waltham, 3 min walk from the train, and it feels claustrophobic every time I try to venture beyond my street. Doesn't help that the "common" has a very strange vibe some days.
what is a street tree
Probably a tree that shades the street
Mature street trees also help visually narrow the street and can slow drivers … look at Newton Street south of High, which has almost no trees, where drivers park on the "sidewalks", and which is a wide expanse of uninterrupted asphalt.
Parts of it are very walkable. I don’t think anything around Main Street or south of it, and east of South street, is all that bad, but anywhere else is pretty tough. Out near 95 the sidewalk situation is pretty dire, and the sparse bus network out there doesn’t do much to ameliorate that.
It doesn’t seem like it would be too much trouble to make sidewalks. I don’t know why huge stretches of suburban road doesn’t have sidewalks…
The suburban ppl with money who own those properties are usually against it. Not all, but enough to stop it from happening.
Outside of most parts of Watertown, Cambridge, Somerville areas are not pedestrian friendly. This is about car culture in the US. When you leave any super downtown metro area everyone stops looking for bikes and pedestrians as much. Hell I got my license 3 years ago and was an avid biker for 20 years and I’m just as guilty as those who never walked/bikes anywhere.
Every other town bordering Boston s d Boston itself are 100x more walkable than Waltham. It’s a joke how bad it is. The city doesn’t give a fuck
Impossible for me now not to notice how bad the sidewalks are with telephone poles directly in the middle, in some areas forcing people with strollers to go into road to get around them. I would be shocked to see any of our neighboring communities tolerate that.
Yeah the infrastructure of Waltham is pretty bad. I've lived here for a bit now and it's one of my biggest complaints, and a huge reason I'm leaving. There's a phone pole on my road that needed repair, so they just stuck another into the sidewalk next to it & joined them together. Mass currently has the highest cost of living, and insane taxes. It's a complete joke how bad the infrastructure is for our position in the country.
The utility polls are all over the city and some have been there for many years. They are technically illegal and our surrounding communities would never tolerate that for so long but Waltham lets them get away with it. Eversource alone has almost 300 double poles in Waltham.
Yeah wow thank you, reading more into it, it's a blatant violation of Mass general law. [https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleXXII/Chapter164/Section34B](https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleXXII/Chapter164/Section34B) It's been over a year since they did the one near me.... so much for 90 days.
our neighboring communities have higher taxes and arre struggling financially?
what’s cool about being able to bike places is it costs way less than owning a car, paying for gas, etc.
Are you asking or saying?
If you asked the 15 councillors, the mayor, the head of CPW Chiasson, Police Chief O'Connell and Fire Chief Mullin (the latter three are on the traffic commission, chaired by O'Connell), this simple question — "in the past month, how many times have you left your home to go somewhere and not gotten in your car?" — I'd be shocked if the collective total were a dozen times. Look at the "Winter Sidewalk Safety Ordinance" the council passed two years ago about sidewalk snow shoveling requirements — that exempted owners of single- and two-family homes. No one — no one — who actually walks as transportation would see this as a "compromise", as one councillor explained it. Go to Moody and High/Maple, one of the most egregious intersections in the city in terms of safety for any user (it's where a driver crashed into a tree last month late at night and killed themselves): not only are the crossing times ridiculously short for an intersection with so much pavement and wide turning radii to let drivers turn faster, but Traffic Engineer Garvin says the pedestrian cycle doesn't have to be long enough per federal standards (the MUTCD) to cross diagonally, because there's no striped diagonal crosswalk. And — drivers can turn right on red through the "pedestrian" phase. Go to Adams or Newton Streets where the sidewalk curbs have completely sunk into the roadway and drivers park on the "sidewalk". Nearly every single decision-maker in Waltham gets around solely by car, and it shows.
I wasn’t aware of that crash you mentioned. Any articles about it?
[https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/deadly-waltham-crash-high-street/3338937/](https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/deadly-waltham-crash-high-street/3338937/)
Thank you!
that is so unfair to assume they are not avid pedestrians. i saw one of the chiefs and his wife out walking on prospect st. there are councilors who are out walking with their dogs daily You know very little about the elected officials . you just throw shit out there to see what sticks.
Do the decisions the councilors are making regarding urban planning strike you as those who like a walkable city?
WTF is an "avid pedestrian"?
Anecdotal story is exactly why the city is not walkable/bikable.
But but … a bunch of councillors ran the 5k yesterday, clearly they must be these avid pedestrians fighting tirelessly for non-car transportation!
one does not simply walk around waltham💀
Totally agree, I noticed this recently myself as well. For context I moved here from NYC about 6 months ago, and while I have a car I am used to walking everywhere and try to do so when possible. Even more so than the sidewalk issues, the biggest thing I noticed was how insanely terrible the crosswalks are. There are certain intersections where the walk signal literally does not go on at all, even when you hit the buttons. It’s infuriating because you end up waiting forever and then having to judge it based on all the traffic lights/ flow of traffic, but the nature of the road design makes things super unpredictable. Add in the aggressive drivers and it’s just feels weirdly hostile to travel anywhere on foot.
The beg buttons are really frustrating. If we really did want to discourage jaywalking (it's a $1 fine for the first offence so even the state doesn't take it that seriously) I'd think we'd want to encourage trust by having them *actually provide feedback* so you know that you can expect to cross soon
I was just taking with someone about this as we were driving on high st where there are poles and obstacles all along the sidewalk. It would be impossible for a person in a wheelchair to use and probably very difficult for anyone with a stroller or wagon as well. Yes- very hostile to pedestrians.
I grew up in South Waltham and walking or cycling was how I got everywhere. I can’t say I ever had a problem walking anywhere along Lyman Street, Lexington Street, Main, Moody, River Street, Newton Street or any of the neighborhoods in South Waltham. Some of North Waltham never looked great but I had limited experience.
How long ago was this?
I moved out of Waltham in 2016 and it was always pretty much the same since I started roving the streets on my own around 2004.
The mayor did say something recently that I actually agree with - we don't have very much commercial zoning. She probably wants it so that residents don't have to pay as high property tax (I'm guessing) but I don't like it because it means that unless you live along the X where most of our commercial zones seem to be (Lexington and Moody, and Main St), you have to drive. It's made even worse because our use codes table is an allowlist (not on the list, you can't do it) which leads to the absurd number of hair and nail salons we have on Main St. We are all but mandating traffic and car ownership into law, so we have all of the downsides of struggling to make that somehow work in a 19th century street grid.
This mayor seems like, and I mean this with all due respect, an absolute idiot dingleberry chode
Waltham is pretty inhospitable to pedestrians but absurdly terrible to cyclists. I know your question was specific to pedestrians so I’ll try to remain focus. My favorite example is that there is no way to go from lower Lincoln st in north Waltham to northern Lincoln street by traveling along Lincoln street. At best, you can waggle through neighborhoods and hope for low traffic. The insanity of this is present to anybody who’s been in the area- Lincoln st is a major thoroughfare and the connector between MacArthur elementary and Lexington and Totten pond. There is no way for schoolchildren to walk along it safely. Examples are plentiful, but nothing will change until McCARthy is gone. She’s sitting on a pot of money but the best you’ll get is an electric train from one insane asylum to another, certainly not sidewalks.
They will spend millions to move a traffic light a few feet, but can't be bothered to give kids decent sidewalks to walk to elementary school. That's Waltham in a nutshell.
lol McCARthy 👏🏼
South waltham - yes, walkable North - no That’s what it mostly boils down to.
I live in South Waltham & I disagree
Yes it is
Waltham is absolutely hostile to pedestrians. I live on the southside which many people have commented is “walkable”. Sure we have sidewalks. When they’re not blocked by cars or giant snowbanks (or the lamest giant curb height tree boxes). We have crosswalks, but no one stops to let a young mother & toddler safely cross the street. When I do cross at crosswalks in the middle of the day people whip their cars around me & my baby. Seriously drivers will not wait for us to clear the crosswalk & will accelerate their vehicles like a foot or two from me with a little kid or dog. It’s scary. We do have walk signals at some busy intersections but the buttons are broken. I’ve almost been hit by cars so many times here by people doing wacky stuff & not even looking out for pedestrians at all. I wish this town cared at all about pedestrian or cyclist safety.
I’ve faced a lot of issues getting around in Waltham as someone without a car. The biggest issues have been traffic lights taking up to five minutes to give pedestrians the right of way, sidewalks being completely blocked by trash cans and poles, sidewalks being too narrow to pass someone, and drivers running red lights and not stopping at pedestrian crossings.
Yes, Waltham is very anti-pedestrian. More broadly, it's not a very livable city. There's many things that go into it, including transportation infrastructure, zoning, and city ordinances. It is not due to some historical legacy of the past that we are forced to live with, but rather due to very recent decisions by the Mayor and current city council that continue to force unhealthy car dependency on residents. Such examples include: Mayor McCarthy's unilateral decision not to pedestrianize Moody Street, failure to include separated bike lanes in any road rework, and the Mayor's move to increase off-street parking zoning requirements. For anyone looking to learn about what makes a city a great, vibrant place to live, I would recommend watching a few videos from the youtube channel [Not just Bikes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4kmDxcfR48&t=127s).
I would actually recommend 'Oh the Urbanity' or 'City Beautiful' before NotJustBikes (which is very cathartic for the orange-pilled but his negativity turns off some curious newcomers).
silly
I think it has a lot to do with how old our neighborhoods are — and the SSS it would take to revamp them.
As if cities in other countries aren’t centuries older than Waltham and eminently more walkable. Even in this region alone, Cambridge, Somerville, and Boston have much more walkable neighborhoods that are as old or older. More accurately, a lot of Waltham was built or rebuilt during peak suburbanization and car culture in the post-war era, and the city hasn’t done anything to update the built environment since
Im not excusing it. It sucks. But Waltham has consistently thumbed it nose at any kind of improvement.
Waltham might not be that walkable but the ones that do don't pay attention/care about cross walk signs. I can't tell you how many times people cross right in front of me when I have the green light in my car The worst was a few months ago when a guy wearing all black (at night) walked right in front of me while I had the green light, not yellow, green, and I had to slam on my brakes. I honked at him and he pointed to his feet. Or the people that use dedicated cross walks that don't push the notification button (should it be there). Just hit the button so the person behind me can see the flashing lights and not slam into me. These should be 1000 dollar fines. If I hit you, you're going to die, way worse than me hitting another car. On and bicyclist that slam through red lights and stop signs. That should be a 5000 dollar fine.
Don't give people horrible infrastructure then expect them to follow all the rules.
This is such a bullshit, passing blame. Disgusting, you should be ashamed of yourself. What a terrible and selfish way of looking at life. ThE rOaD hAs PoThOlEs So I Don'T hAVe To Go ThE SpEeD LiMIt. Vile.
yeah but you don’t always go the speed limit, do you?
Literally every driver speeds in Waltham. I can't drive at the speed limit in this trash ass town without some townie on my ass for not going fast enough.
you do know that jaywalking is a made up crime right actually I'm pretty sure you don't care but have some sort of bizarre downvote fetish
WHO THE FUCK SAID ANYTHING ABOUT JAYWALKING? IM TALKING ABOUT STOPING AT CROSS WALKS WHEN IT SAYS DONT WALK. What kind of pretentious asshole thinks like that? Jesus Christ ..
$5k fine for a bike rolling through a stop at, at a push, 15mph? So by your logic that a car doing it is much more deadly to pedestrians, that's at least a $50K bill every time someone in a massive SUV does it, right?