Councilors call out Mayor Mitchell for “dangerous and malicious spiked cobblestones”

New Bedford City Councilors Hugh Dunn, Ian Abreu, and Maria Giesta have sent a strongly worded letter to Mayor Jon Mitchell regarding the “dangerous and malicious placement of spiked cobblestones median at the entry of our City is wrong.”

Here is the full letter:

In response, the mayor’s office put out the following statement:

A new cobblestone median strip was recently installed at the busy intersection that leads to the New Bedford-Fairhaven Bridge on Route 6, which replaces bushes that have been trampled by foot traffic. The median strip separates one side of the five-lane, state highway intersection and provides a safety buffer for vehicles using the east and west lanes. Foot traffic along the lanes of this highway intersection, which has a history of vehicle accidents, has become a public safety hazard. The improved median strip is intended to address an increasingly dangerous situation where people walking along the median have put both themselves and motorists at risk.

The Federal Highway Administration published this on the safety benefits of raised medians – you can see some examples in St. Petersburg and elsewhere and how they reduce crashes (as you can see some include raised grass beds support by walls, fences, etc.) https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/ped_bike/tools_solve/medians_trifold/.

It is a very dangerous intersection that has had dozens of crashes, including a fatality several years back; here are a few recent articles pedestrian accidents:

When redesign began, the newspaper noted, “from 2009-11, there were 32 crashes in the intersection, resulting in one fatality and nine injuries,” see this article: http://www.southcoasttoday.com/article/20120202/NEWS/202020337

http://wbsm.com/homeless-new-bedford-woman-hit-by-car-at-octopus-intersection/
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/article/20150501/news/150509934

Improvements to the intersection over the last couple years started here —
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/article/20140911/news/409110403
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/article/20141219/NEWS/141219426