Boston police report that a female pedestrian has died Tuesday after being struck by a dump truck. Police received a call at 10:47 a.m. about a woman who was struck at the intersection of Dorchester Street and Southhampton Street at Andrew Square. The woman was taken to the local hospital and later died, police said. A helicopter, yellow police tape, several first responder vehicles and investigators on foot could be seen at the intersection. A dump truck suspected to be involved in the incident was located by a state trooper about a mile away and was surrounded by yellow police tape as investigators inspected it. State police said several intersections in the vicinity of Dorchester Avenue and Southampton Street were closed because of the investigation.
Tragic as it is, given the volume of construction vehicles and passenger vehicles, the frequenting of the area by people with various illnesses, the location of the MBTA station, the intersection of six roadways at the Andrew Square junction has always been problematic and the likelihood of more accidents is high.
Fast becoming a prominent gateway to the South Boston neighborhood, transportation planners have a real challenge as Andrew Square and roads leading into it are seeing and will see further residential and commercial development both having major impact on that end of South Boston. Landscape treatments and amenities are, in the words of a local resident from the area, the equivalent of putting “lipstick on a pig”, meaning no disrespect to our porcine friends [editor’s note]. This person went on to say that the recent decision by the City of Boston to not approve the location of an ‘Amazon delivery staging facility at the site of the former junkyard on Dorchester Avenue, “must have taken this nightmarish intersection into account”.
The infamous Kosciusko Circle at the beginning of Morrissey Boulevard, if not redesigned, will be further stressed by the massive development being proposed at the former Bayside Expo site on Mount Vernon Street. Plans have been submitted calling for a 30 + acre mixed use project Documents filed by Accordia Partners with the Boston Planning & Development Agency detail what would be one of the city’s largest development projects and a hub for businesses such as life sciences firms. Dorchester Bay City, so-called, would encompass 5.9 million square feet and include about 1,740 residential units, 155,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space, and about 4 million square feet of space for offices, scientific research, and perhaps academic uses.
The tragic death of this young woman, while certainly not the legacy she would choose to symbolize, may serve to heighten awareness of the imminence of a need to focus attention on the transportation planning aspects of Andrew Square and all heavily trafficked roadways converging there.
