Do you bicycle in Franklin Park? Are you a walker who is worried about being hit by a bicycler? Would you bicycle in the park if you felt safer?

As part of the transportation and park access study we have been asked to consider bicycle use - what deters it? Is it a problem? What can be done to promote and support bicycles? Where can children learn to ride a bike in the park? Do we need designated bike lanes on walking paths and roads?

My own pet peeve is having to carry my bicycle over the low stone walls and granite blocks at entrances when I bike through the park from the Stadium entrance to American Legion Highway (my route to work). I wish the entrances and granite blocks running along the roadways had wider spaces for a bicycle with side baskets to pass through.

I also think we need more bike racks. The only ones are at the Golf Clubhouse (and they're just a year old). I park my bike at the Playstead, at the Zoo, and at the Shattuck picnic area and usually lock it to a sign post, others use the trees for lack of anywhere better. Where would you like to see a bike rack? 

Weigh in if you are a park bicyclist or a wannabee bicyclist! We may convene a small working group to look at bike access in the park. Want to be part of the discussion? Post on the blog and send an email to: mail@franklinparkcoalition.org
 

There have been recent complaints about speeding park maintenance vehicles - driving along the road in front of the Shattuck Hospital, by the picnic area and tennis courts. Cars and trucks are going to and from the maintenance yard that serves all the parks in the city, The "yard" is the starting and ending point for maintenance workers and their vehicles every day. Has this been a problem you've witnessed? Is it a safety hazard for pedestrians on the Loop Path? Let us know, share what you've seen.

After more than five years of clearing invasives - Japanese knotweed, glossy buckthorn, and others - with close to 1,000 volunteers each year, we've learned that there are some intractable plants that require more than we can do manually. To save this forest and prevent it becoming a wasteland of knotweed with no native plants or animals surviving, we will resort to limited use of a low-toxicity herbicide.

The plan is to inject Japanese knotweed with glyphosate, the active ingredient in Round Up; paint stumps of the few glossy buckthorn and Asian bittersweet plants that cannot be pulled by the roots; and spray leaves of poison ivy that pose a health hazard because of their proximity to walking paths. The bulk of invasive removal will continue to be done by hand with volunteers and young people. Cutting knotweed to prevent its spread, pulling buckthorn and bittersweet by the roots with weed wrenches, snipping catbrier, and weeding garlic mustard will all continue with the generous assistance of volunteers.

Signs, some type of lightweight fencing or means to rope off an area, and publicity on this website will alert park users to herbicide use. Notification will go out a few days in advance and areas will be roped off for a week to ten days following herbicide treatments. Special precautions will be taken to limit spread of herbicide in the broader enviroment. To learn more, you can go to the Woodlands Restoration page and read specifics.

People who came out to last Saturday's (March 8th) meeting, including many FPC volunteers, listened carefully to the the proposal to save the Franklin Park woodlands - Boston's oldest and perhaps largest forest. As one said afterwards, "if you think of it in terms of a cost-benefit analysis, it makes total sense. We're impacting our woodland environment with a small amount of herbicide in order to save the entire woodland. One chipmunk may become ill, but if we don't act, the park will turn into a knotweed desert and not a single native creature will find it habitable."

Do you have questions? concerns? add to this blog!

A team from the B.U. School of Environmental Health will be helping evaluate and test conditions before and after herbicide use. They can answer public health concerns, understand the impact, and are following the emerging science around invasives control.

The Egleston Square "Parkside"  neighborhood group has had it with cars speeding along Walnut Avenue, prohibiting access to the park and causing numerous accidents. For the second time in three years they are contacting city officials, reaching out to other community organizations around the park, and pushing for stop signs. The first effort in 2004 resulted in a pedestrian count that claimed less than 100 people crossed on a weekday in any one spot so no stop sign or traffic calming measures were warranted. An arbitrary number, rather than children's lives, decides whether we can safely access the park?

The Seaver and Blue Hill Avenue corridor is no better. Despite traffic lights and crosswalks, getting across four lanes with drag racers ignoring red lights means that families often stay home rather than risk a trip to the playground. Cutting down towering street trees and road "improvements" on American Legion Highway has increased speeding on that road also.

When parks and active play are increasingly turned to as a key solution to childhood obesity, we are limiting access.  

A transportation study for Franklin Park is currently in the works. We hope that recommendations will include increased pedestrian access. The Franklin Park Coalition would like to see fewer cars in the park, but it's not always easy or safe to get to the park without a car. What issues have you faced walking, bicycling or taking the T to the park?  

While those of us who are in Franklin Park every day or every week KNOW the park is safe, it still suffers from decades-old negative perceptions around safety. I hear people who live a block away from the park say they would never go there - and people from Newton say, "Isn't that where all the bodies are dumped?" The media helps locate crime scenes by stating their proximity to Franklin Park. How do we turn the negative perceptions around?

The park does suffer from what the police call "quality of life crimes" that are not a threat to anyone but mean added trash or unsavoriness in the park. Roaring motor bikes, some drug use, a drinking party, or the occasional smell of pot impact our experience of the park and may chase people away.

The Franklin Park Coalition has advocated for more Park Ranger patrols in Franklin Park - a rider in uniform on horseback is a great deterent to quality of life crimes and makes people using the park FEEL safer. Horses can access the woodland paths and riders notice more than they would if they were in a patrol car. Among the FPC Board and broader membership we have imagined a dedicated park ranger during the warmer seasons. This would be someone we can get to know, who will learn the different areas of the park, hear about trouble spots from park users, and do nature education with young people and park visitors. A few dog walkers are wary of this. More frequent Ranger patrols might crack down on off-leash dogs.

In my decade as an active park user I have never once felt frightened or that I was compromising my safety by walking in the park alone. But how about you? Have you felt safe? Have you stayed away from the park out of fear? Would a park ranger you can get to know make a difference?

--Christine Poff, Franklin Park Coalition