Painted crosswalks play a big role in making Boston accessible and safe, but making a new one can be a long, winding road in itself.
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Painted crosswalks play a big role in making Boston accessible and safe. But creating a new one can be a long and winding road of its own — and the reason boils down to an antiquated system in need of a technology upgrade.
The journey to get white lines painted at an intersection of Washington Street near Oak Square in Brighton took more than a year.
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“Crazy to me, and a lot of the neighbors, everyone was like, why can't we just put some paint down on the street? We need this crosswalk,” said Christian MilNeil of Streetsblog Massachusetts.
The MBTA, as part of an initiative to make crosswalks near bus stops more accessible, redid the area. The curb work and adding ramps came quickly. But for more than a year, the project's final piece, painting the crosswalk, stalled.
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“It turned out the reason it was taking so long was because the MBTA was following these state rules, city ordinance that requires there to be a cop at every construction site,” MilNeil said
And this isn't an isolated issue. According to the city, in 2023, 43% percent of Boston police details went unfilled.
It’s important to note, police want to work these off-duty details, but it turns out the system that runs all this is more antiquated than you might think.
“They are still using pen and paper. Crazy,” said Charlie Chieppo, a senior fellow with The Pioneer Institute.
Boston police have nine police officers and eight civilians who manage the detail system, using phone calls and actual printed forms that need to be filled out and turned back in. This, for a system the city said had more than 122,000 detail requests last year.
It’s baffling to people like Chieppo.
“Stuff like this, the T, I can only do it in increments because I have high blood pressure already,” he joked.
The city now has a request for proposals that would modernize the detail system, moving everything online, which the city says will greatly improve efficiency.
And early next year, the city will open up these construction details outside of Boston police on a priority system.
“There are jobs that are just going unfilled right now,” Mayor Michelle Wu said. “It is not taking away from anyone else's opportunities, it is really seeing that there's extra on the table that we need to make sure that gets filled for the safety, across the city, for everyone in our community.”
BPD will get first crack at the detail, but those that go unfilled will then move down a priority list, first to other local police agencies, like university police departments, and then eventually to civilians.
This opens up new, high-paying jobs to civilians for the very first time.
“Expanding the people and the force able to do this work will really actually mean a lot more public safety improvements to our streets,” said Anna Leslie of the Allston Brighton Health Collaborative.
Embracing the new technology will save money – and time — in a city growing by the day.
