Governor Deval Patrick, MIT President Rafael Reif: We call on you to improve pedestrian safety along Memorial Drive

MIT Sailing Pavilion is the nexus of a community of MIT students, alums, college sailors from the region, high school sailors, kayakers, paddleboarders, and the variety of joggers and walkers who stop to take in the views or use our facilities. The Sailing Pavilion has more than 3,000 annual members from the MIT community alone. An estimated 250-500 people use our facility daily during 3 seasons, and on peak days we have more than 800 daily visitors.

There is a busy pedestrian crosswalk just outside the MIT Sailing Pavilion at 134 Memorial Drive. Memorial Drive is a busy public highway where drivers often go past the posted 35 mph speed limit. Drivers are hampered in their ability to view pedestrians, who come out from between parked cars on a painted-only crosswalk. Drivers traveling east exit from a dark underpass with limited visibility and less than 3-5 seconds of reaction time before the walkway. Pedestrians are not limited to using the crosswalks, which exacerbates their peril as they look for safe ways to cross and many use gaps in traffic to cross away from the actual pedestrian crossing.

In the last two weeks alone, we have had 1 death and 1 near-death just outside the doors of the MIT Sailing Pavilion. One member of our community is critically injured and we want some positive change to come out of this terrible accident.

We request for the pedestrian crosswalk at 134 Memorial Drive:
- embedded flashers at the ground level in the crosswalk
- above-ground strobe flashers which are triggered by pedestrians
- consideration of the utility of a traffic light triggered by pedestrians
- enclosure of the grassy median area to the west of the crosswalk to reduce pedestrian deviation from the crosswalk