A car hit and killed a 79 year old Barber on Wyoming Avenue in front of his shop. How fast was the driver going? Was the driver texting or talking on their cell phone? The traffic and speeding in this neighborhood is out of control. The Melrose Patch story made me cry. A number of people have died on the streets of Melrose in the past year. Now what?
Alderman at Large, Manisha Bewtra is a City Planner and was a paid consultant on the "Complete Streets" project.
She should lead the effort about the traffic and speeding problems and offer solutions and proposals to the BOA.
Action is needed by the Complete Streets group, the Traffic Commission and city politicians. And I agree that Manisha Bewtra should organize action NOW! She should show us that our vote counts. Manisha needs to apply her background and help Melrose prevent other death tragedies on our streets.
Can anyone show me where it says the car that hit this poor man was speeding?
He was not speeding it was the sun in his eyes as he came over the tracks.Also the man had a clean driving record.This is a tragic accident.Please pray for him and his family he will be missed.Getting your hair cut was a lesson in life i will miss his great stories....R.I.P.
Imagine the lives we would save if we changed the speed to 10 MPH!!!!!
or stayed in our homes and never left !
If the sun was in the driver's eyes, he should have slowed down to a safe speed. There's no excuse to drive blinded and kill someone.
To many people in to small of an area. Definitely not the Melrose I grew up in. And FYI it was the sun, not speeding. The barber walked out ( like many) without looking. Not the drivers fault.
Melrose is still beneath its population peak of 1970, fwiw.
I agree that we are certainly not ‘over-populated’. I believe that what makes the roads appear more congested is an increase in the number of vehicles per family.
Then be prepared to be shocked.
Melrose in the Baby Boom was a younger city with a lot more children than it has now. Even now, the school census is within the band it's been moving within for the past decade or more, pace the bleatings of the more-money-for-schools crowd. Boston has grown more than Melrose, which makes sense because Melrose has even less land available (proportionally) for development. It's not like the new developments along the railroad tracks are 10 stories high with room for big families. Melrose has a lot of households with one or two people.
As I'm sure you are aware, Melrose WAS North Malden, and even though eventually given a different name, has never really changed. Realistically we are still North Malden!
"they're huge"
Hardly.
And Wyoming Square hasn't changed that much since I moved here almost 30 years ago; it and the southernmost points of Melrose near the Malden line have always been more Malden-like, as you frame it.
There was a class in the 70's with a graduating class over 600. The last class over 400 was the mid 80's. It got as low as under 220 10 years or so ago. Even with those large classes in the 70's and 80's Melrose still had more kids in the local catholic schools and St. Mary's as they do today. Gigantic Irish family's throughout town. 6 to 10 kids in a house was not unusual. Coolidge, Beebe, Franklin and Winthrop schools were all open as elementary schools. Kids were everywhere...and with all these kids most families had 1 car, a few with 2 cares. Hardly any kids in the City had cars of their own unless they worked and bought it themselves. The increase in traffic is all due to more cars per household. Melrose is congested, but trying getting through Wakefield on a Saturday...cars and construction everywhere in every city.