It is undeniable that Tufts’ infamously hilly campus is challenging to navigate. Try as students might, an uphill trek is nearly unavoidable. The pedestrian experience is a part of day-to-day life here on campus. While many pedestrian safety issues go unnoticed by students in the chaos of each day, this was not the case for junior Anand Patil, when he took his first steps at Tufts as a first-year in 2022.
Patil was already passionate about improving pedestrian safety due to his previous experiences in his hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio. After noticing unsafe driving around a busy plaza in Cincinnati, Patil decided to take action. He emailed a city councilor to get traffic-calming measures in place, and working with the local government on that initiative opened his eyes to the world of policy.
Patil noticed similar issues at Tufts. His background in advocacy for pedestrian safety set the stage for the next two years of his time as a Tufts Community Union senator on the Administration & Policy Committee.
“At the start of 2022, I became a senator, and I sent an email to operations … I said I wanted to work on long-term and short-term plans to improve the roads, crosswalks and infrastructure around campus,” Patil said.
Patil walked through campus, taking pictures of all the issues he saw concerning pedestrian safety and accessibility, and then drafted a TCU resolution with the help of other senators. The resolution, named “A Resolution Calling On Tufts University Board of Trustees to Invest in the Safety, Accessibility, and Quality of Outdoor Pedestrian Infrastructure,” was passed by the Senate on April 16, 2023.
But the question still remained: How could the resolution turn into action? Patil wanted to get the trustees’ support in transforming his ideas into real-life construction efforts. After struggling to find their contact information, Patil walked into Ballou Hall, climbed to the fourth floor and hand-delivered the resolution to Paul Tringale, secretary of corporation in the Office of the Trustees.
Soon, Patil had administrators working with the Senate on his initiative.
“In general, this was something that I think a lot of administrators cared about and wanted to work on … what it took was something to spark it,” Patil commented.
Patil’s resolution proposed a number of projects including daylighting — increasing visibility at intersections by removing parked cars near crosswalks — traffic-calming measures, redoing the sidewalks and intersection by the Mayer Campus Center, replacing and adding tactile strips at crosswalks and other general improvements on the quality of sidewalks on the Academic Quad. As early as the summer after his first year, improvements were being made.
“Over the summer, they completed about $1 million in sidewalk and road repairs,” Patil said.
With the help of Mike Howard, the executive vice president of Tufts University, an official Campus Planning and Development Committee was formed to address the issue in both the short and long term. The committee, which includes individuals from various departments across Tufts, hired an auditing firm to construct an itemized list of renovations.
“This firm’s job was to look at every single sidewalk on this campus … and rate it. How good is its quality? Does it have tactile strips? Does it have proper curb cuts?” Patil explained. “And then looking at accessibility pathways, like how does a handicapped user get from [Harleston Hall] up to … [Carmichael Hall].”
The committee continues to meet several times a semester to work on addressing these issues.
One challenge that the committee faces is that many roads on the Medford/Somerville campus are not owned by the university, but by townships. Rocco DiRico, executive director of Government & Community Relations at Tufts and a member of the committee, highlighted some of the issues that administrators come across when attempting to implement changes, specifically when dealing with public roads.
“When the university is making improvements to public roads, we make sure that we coordinate with the local municipality to ensure that our improvements comply with local guidelines and priorities,” DiRico wrote in an email to the Daily.
This can be difficult when trying to redesign areas around Tufts. Sometimes improvements to public roads can be more easily done when they are linked to capital projects and presented as one package.
One example of this is on Boston Avenue, where renovations to Bacon Hall are underway. DiRico described plans to connect the large renovation project to smaller road improvements that the committee would like to see done.
“Tufts University is currently renovating [and] expanding Bacon Hall located at 530 Boston Avenue in Medford … As part of the project, the university is making several infrastructure improvements to Boston Avenue. These improvements include a new sidewalk, a new crosswalk, new ramps, and new trees,” DiRico wrote.
These changes will aim to make crossing Boston Avenue easier and safer, while ramps will serve to increase accessibility.
Kirsten Behling, associate dean of student accessibility and academic resources, is also on the committee. Behling focuses on improving accessibility on campus, which, despite the road renovations that have taken place, remains a challenge.
“We are geographically limited by the hill in the middle of campus. The university recognizes the impact it causes and has offered a few different methods of navigating it, including the Dowling Hall elevator, the campus shuttle, and the use of the Lyft accommodation through the StAAR Center,” Behling wrote to the Daily.
First-year Sophia Caro, who was briefly on crutches in the fall 2024 semester, emphasized the challenge posed by the hill.
“Getting up on the [academic] quad is just really tricky … because we’re on a hill, pretty much all the paths are stairs,” Caro said.
Caro highlighted a need for more access points to the Academic Quad and Reservoir Quad. She found the uphill quads challenging to reach other than by the Dowling Hall elevator, which can often be crowded at peak hours and only be taken from Boston Avenue.
For addressing problems like limited campus elevators, Behling expressed excitement about the physical accessibility audit being conducted to evaluate Tufts’ current accessibility issues and propose potential solutions.
“That report will help guide our priorities for continuing our work into the future. The report is particularly significant because it encompasses the experiences of many different Tufts community members, including students, staff, faculty and visitors to campus,” Behling wrote.
These efforts have and will continue to improve both the safety and inclusivity of campus for the entire Tufts community. Many would say much work remains to make campus easily accessible to all — but with the attention of the committee and the dedication of student senators and Tufts administration, renovations are being made piece by piece to upgrade the pedestrian experience.
