Happy Memorial Day Weekend! This is the kickoff to Awesome Sauce Season in New England and a time to remember our nation’s fallen heroes. A short post before I head south for my nephew’s high school graduation:
David Drown was an 18-year-old from Fairhaven who was killed in action in Vietnam in 1967. As the father of a soon-to-be teenage son, it’s hard for me to fathom the grief this young man’s parents must have felt to lose him in what should have been the first year of a long and happy adulthood.
Town Meeting voted to name a stretch of road after David Drown in 1974. I’ve written about David Drown Boulevard before. The road is not a worthy tribute to the sacrifice of its namesake.
This lovely piece of over-engineering is two-tenths of a mile long and features what appear to be 12-foot lanes with a four-foot shoulder. The bike path sits along a curb that precariously backs a road whose design speed is 35+MPH. Cars use this road as a cut-through to avoid an additional traffic light. There’s an unwarranted stop sign at the bottom of the hill and an intersection at the top of it, so cars traveling from west to east tend to accelerate from 0 to 45 MPH on this short stretch, then brake at the end of it. The noise and exhaust fumes make this an unpleasant road to walk or ride alongside. The speeds of the cars make it hard to cross this street safely.
In conversations I’ve had about David Drown with Josh Crabb, Fairhaven’s excellent Highway Superintendent, he’s expressed a desire to address this corridor sometime in the future. I hope he and the town can take action on this sooner rather than later. Creating a green buffer between the bike path and the street would slow traffic, make the path more pleasant to ride and walk on, and save the town money over the long term.
Freedom means being able to choose how you get around town. It means being able to get around even if you can’t drive. It means being able to walk or roll down the sidewalk, breathe clean air, and have a conversation with a friend. Livable streets embody the freedom our fallen heroes fought for. They made the ultimate sacrifice. One way we can honor that legacy is to create places that truly are worth dying for.
Perfectly said.