BOSTON --- Walking around South Boston can be dangerous these days, and residents are fed up with reckless drivers who have little regard for crosswalks and speed limits.
Just ask Ed Flynn, the Navy veteran and recently elected president of the Boston City Council who has been working tirelessly to do something in his neighborhood about pedestrian safety.
"I cannot tell you how many neighbors, parents with children in strollers, and people with disabilities contact me to report speeding cars flying by them when they are crossing on L Street, East Broadway at Medal of Honor Park, or on Dorchester Street and West 4th Street by Marian Manor," Flynn said in a public safety statement calling for numerous infrastructure improvements, reduction in speed limits, strict police enforcement, speed bumps, raised crosswalks, 4-way stop signs, blinking pedestrian crossing signs, and other safety measures for Boston.
Flynn's parents, Ray and Catherine Flynn, are among those who have been telling him about the dangers they encounter while walking around the city and attempting to safely cross the streets. Ray Flynn was the popular mayor of the city from 1984 to 1993 before serving as U.S. ambassador to the Vatican from 1993 to 1997.
"There's hardly a day that goes by now that they don't tell me about a car speeding by them in a crosswalk when they are with their young grandson, Braeden, my nephew who has special needs," Flynn told the Irish Echo last week.
Flynn is calling the the epidemic of speeding cars a "pubic health emergency" and he is vowing to keep the issue at the top of his priority list now that he has assumed the role of council president.
Ironically, local and national statistics show a steady increase in traffic accidents, hit and runs, and pedestrian fatalities despite fewer cars on the roads during the pandemic. In Flynn's words, drivers today are treating the less congested, open roads "like race tracks," often resulting in injury and death.
Flynn started meeting with concerned neighbors soon after taking a seat on the Council in 2018. One of those residents was Katie Donovan, who was recovering in a wheelchair after being struck in a crosswalk after attending her son's baseball game at a local park. Two months later, a 22-month-old boy, Colin McGrath, was killed when a vehicle crashed into his stroller.
In nearby Brighton, an Irish nurse on her way to work recently at St. Elizabeth's Hospital was killed while apparently in a crosswalk leading to a hospital entrance. Ann O'Flaherty, the married mother of three children, had been working at the hospital since coming to the Boston area in 1988 from Ballintubber, County Mayo.
That tragic crash happened a week before Christmas. A week after Christmas she was buried in Ballintubber Abbey Cemetery following her funeral Mass.
