The Globe reports today that nobody in Boston City Hall or in the state’s transportation bureaucracy knows whether Boston streets are models of safety or hotbeds of carnage because Boston doesn’t share its road crash data with anyone. The report is the latest indication that, although government agencies are putting effort into collecting data, they don’t necessarily know what to do with it.
Today’s Globe zeroes in on road crash data, which encompasses collisions involving automobiles, bicycles, and pedestrians. The Globe reports that the state’s Department of Transportation tries to track collision data statewide, and that most communities use the state crash reporting form to log crashes with their local police departments. Boston uses a different police form, and skips any reporting to the state. So nobody, inside the city or state bureaucracies, is able to measure how accident rates in Boston compare to Cambridge or Quincy or Nantucket.
“Without a clear picture of crash figures, state Department of Transportation efforts to make roads safer for pedestrians do not reach the state’s largest, busiest city,” the Globe reports. “Just this spring, the city potentially lost a piece of a half-million-dollar state program, and potentially much more in years past, because the city does not fully report its accidents.”
It also doesn’t appear that city officials know fully what to do with the accident data they’re keeping from the state. The city’s new transportation commissioner tells the Globe his department typically pulls neighborhood crash data when residents complain to City Hall about a particular spot, or when the city is considering overhauling a particular street. What’s unsaid is, it appears that nobody in the city is in charge of looking for problem spots proactively, and in the absence of a spate of complaints or a road construction crew, Boston’s road crash data is sitting on a server somewhere, untouched.
Incomplete and siloed data isn’t just a Boston transportation issue. Earlier this year, the Globe tried to report on an apparent rise in drug overdoses , but the state data the paper cited was woefully incomplete. There was no overdose data for Boston, Worcester, and Springfield, the state’s three largest cities. Complete statewide data on drug overdoses is only available through mid-2012. Rhode Island is able to track overdoses in real time. But in Massachusetts, police and public health officials have no idea how bad the state’s drug overdose problem is, and anyone trying to formulate a policy response to it is either working with old data or anecdotal evidence.
Earlier this year, Boston city councilor Michelle Wu launched a bid at opening the city’s data to the public. Wu noted that, although the city has moved some of its data online, it’s not clear that the data it has posted is measuring the right things, and is in a format that’s useful to the people who want to access the data. What is clear is that Boston is applying its open data push unevenly: The city has published a year-old database of urban fruit tree locations, but a Globe request for 2,300 accident locations involving an EMS response came back redacted.
— PAUL MCMORROW
BEACON HILL
Lowell Sun columnist Peter Lucas says the people who spent so much money restoring the governor’s office to its original splendor missed the fact that they restored the wrong office — the original office of the governor is what is now the Governor’s Council chamber.
MUNICIPAL MATTERS
Lynn homeowners are slapped with more than $270,000 in fines in 2013 for failing to maintain their properties, the Item reports.
Kevin Cullen says there are lots of people more deserving of having statues erected in their honor than politicians like William Bulger — without ever actually naming Bulger.
NATIONAL POLITICS/WASHINGTON
Questions are being raised about the impartiality of the county prosecutor in charge of the Michael Brown shooting case because of his deep family ties to law enforcement, including the 1964 shooting death of his father, a police officer, at the hands of a black suspect in a St. Louis housing project. Even former New York police commissioner Ray Kelly thinks police in Ferguson, Missouri, need to tone things down a notch or five; instead, police arrested a Getty photographer and a 90-year old Holocaust survivor yesterday. Cincinnati offers a path forward for Ferguson, writes The New Republic‘s Danny Vinik. Community leaders in Boston talk about growing racial tensions in this area as the unrest in Ferguson continues.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie throws his hands up in the air and waves them like he just don’t care.
ELECTIONS
US Sen. John McCain of Arizona comes to New Hampshire, where he won two presidential primaries, to endorse former colleague Scott Brown, NECN reports .
Hillary Clinton goes to Iowa.
Greater Boston examines the roles of Republican Mark Fisher and Democrat Don Berwick as dark horse candidates and their impact on their respective gubernatorial contests .
Three Green-Rainbow Party candidates have filed papers with enough signatures to place their names on the ballot for state treasurer, auditor, and secretary of state.
BUSINESS/ECONOMY
The warring sides in the Market Basket feud say they’re trying really, really hard to reach some agreement by the end of the week. A Boston-based fish vendor cuts his ties with the struggling supermarket chain, the Gloucester Times reports.
The ubiquitous Ice Bucket Challenge, which has raised more than $15.6 million in a few normally quiet summer weeks compared to $1.8 million in the same period as last year, is being touted as a case-study in successful fundraising for other nonprofits.
The Oakley Country Club in Watertown is identified as the scene of a second case of alleged insider trading in as many months.
A new study shows one-third of Americans, including one of every four workers over 50, do not have any savings for retirement , though the survey says those in their 20s are more likely to put away money at an earlier age than their parents.
HEALTH CARE
Health insurance rates for Massachusetts small businesses are heading up .
TRANSPORTATION
New Bedford officials are hoping the state will come up with money to eliminate “speed bumps” — the accumulation of sediment at the bottom of the harbor — that is preventing larger vessels from entering except during the highest tides.
Skydivers reflect on their love of the sport — and Saturday’s death of a veteran diver in Pepperell.
ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT
Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station experiences another malfunction.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
A bid by the Patrick administration to cut spending on legal services for the indigent falls flat, Commonwealth reports .
A felon on federal probation who is being charged in a Chinatown shooting in Boston that wounded four people early Sunday morning is ordered held on $1 million bail.
One of the three men serving a life sentence in the infamous Natural Born Killers slaying of a disabled Avon veteran in 1995 is now charged with the brutal murder of a 72-year-old fellow inmate at MCI-Shirley.
