City homes in on traffic issues at intersections on Pleasant St.

Dangerous turn:: The scene at Pleasant and Victoria streets last month after a motorcycle and pickup truck collided. Said Zac Salwasser, who took the photo, “It is very, very difficult to negotiate a turn onto Pleasant  from the side streets.”Dangerous turn:: The scene at Pleasant and Victoria streets last month after a motorcycle and pickup truck collided. Said Zac Salwasser, who took the photo, “It is very, very difficult to negotiate a turn onto Pleasant from the side streets.”
“On any given day, it’s a constant symphony of screeching tires and honking horns,” said Dorchester resident Zac Salwasser in describing daily life outside his home at the intersection of Pleasant and Victoria streets. “You have drivers from side streets coming in blind.”

The traffic management unit of the Boston Transportation Department has taken up the case, said BTD spokesperson Tracey Ganiatsos, and is conducting a study that it hopes will lead to improvements for drivers and residents alike: a standard 11-hour count of the number of vehicles, pedestrians, and bicycles that pass through the Victoria and Morrill Street intersections on Pleasant Street as well as their turning movements.

“Based on the results of that study, a warrant analysis will be completed to determine if the location warrants traffic signals in accordance with federal transportation guidelines,” Ganiatsos said in an email to the Reporter.

Neighbors estimate that fender benders happen at least once a week, accidents not serious enough to warrant a call to the police or EMTs, so they are largely unreported.

Because the half-mile stretch of Pleasant Street between Stoughton Street and Columbia Road has no stop signs, drivers sail up and down the street unimpeded. Cars trying to turn onto Pleasant from the handful of side streets have little warning or clearance to edge onto the street.

“I’d suggest that a couple of stop signs, strategically placed on Pleasant Street, would help,” Salwasser said. “People wouldn’t treat it as a drag strip between Pleasant and Columbia.”

Salwasser has documented a number of the accidents from his window on Victoria Street, notifying the city through the Citizens Connect app and through the Dorchester representative in the mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Services.

Help came roughly six months ago, when the city added parking restrictions to the Pleasant Street corner to the left of Victoria Street, allowing drivers turning left to get a better look at oncoming traffic. That process took a year of back and forth, Salwasser said, but the extra clearance has made a “noticeable difference” after a particularly nasty March. “They took away two parking spaces on that side of the street,” he said. “With that extra 30 feet, it really makes a difference on the number of close calls.”

But if the traffic study does not bring about another solution for the intersection, Salwasser says he has a plan that many neighbors support. “It’s getting to the point where we’re going to have to put together a more coordinated message because it’s very easy for the city to dismiss a sole constituent, but that’s much harder if there’s a group of us.”


Subscribe to the Dorchester Reporter