Davis Square Streetscape Survey

[sarahsomerville.livejournal.com]

Dear Davis Square Residents, Business Owners, Visitors, and Fans:

The City is working to improve the Davis Square streetscape and wants your ideas for upgrades that will provide safer, easier travel through the area—whether driving, walking, or cycling—as well as enhance the visual appeal of the square. 

We're gathering input via community meetings and a survey.  The survey is located here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/B3PY9SZ
Paper copies are also available.

We also hope you will join us for our next meeting on August 7th, 6pm at the Tufts Administration Building, 167 Holland Street.  

Please check out the blog entry for more information on what we’ve been working on, and spread the word:

http://somervilleresistat.blogspot.com/2012/07/how-would-you-change-davis-square.html

We look forward to your input!

Comments

[ron_newman]

Hi, Sarah. Can you edit your post to put http:// in front of that Survey Monkey URL? That will make it clickable: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/B3PY9SZ

(To edit your post, use the blue pencil icon)

[pristinepetals.livejournal.com]

I appreciate what you're trying to do here and applaud your efforts to get input from the community. I would Like to caution you that I don't believe you'll get great data from your survey monkey. Pwrhaps its not to late to make changes? Question 7 is worded poorly .. It's unclear if "good condition" means that the existing conditions are good and need no further improvement or if it means it is important to to me that the conditions are made to be good in the future as opposed to settling for acceptable conditions. A respondent shouldn't have to stop to infer the intent of the question. The question on intersections is also tough. I believe you'd get better information if you allowed respondent to select "I don't know or I'm not sure" rather than forcing them to rank. I was forced into a choice when I really don't know the street names (I know... After 7 years I should know better, but I'm a new englander at my core) and could not simply skip the questions. It's possible other questions could also benefit from a "don't know" response. Sorry to be critical-- but I'd love to see you collecteaningful responses to better influence the decision made.

[hahathor.livejournal.com]

I agree; it's wonderful that you're doing this, and I think you could get more useful information if you tweak the survey. If you are interested, I work professionally as a researcher and survey developer and would be happy to donate my time to making this a more user friendly survey, and one that would get more useful data. I can be reached at my_lj_Name-AT-gmail-DOT-com if you're interested.

[pristinepetals.livejournal.com]

Great suggestion. If the survey is pulled and recoded, I'll happily take it again and recruit others to share their views as well.

[boblothrope.livejournal.com]

Agreed on both points.

Who wrote the survey?

[codeman38.livejournal.com]

On a similar note: if someone doesn't answer walk, bike or drive on question 2, then question 5 should be optional. (I had to fudge it by just putting the streets that my preferred bus route uses...)

Edit: That question is also rather useless for residents of the Square, too. Maybe if it asked about routes to get out...

And the intersections one...yeah, with my sense of direction (or lack thereof), I had to resort to Google Maps to remember which street went with which name.

[marphod.livejournal.com]

On the survey, you've reversed the questions which should be radio buttons (either you are a visitor or a resident; only one primary means of access) and the ones that should be checkboxes (you can have multiple alternate means of access).

You probably should redo the survey.

[codeman38.livejournal.com]

Wait, I wasn't supposed to be able to answer "equally rail and bus" on question 2? There I go, screwing up people's results as I always do... -_-;;

[secretlyironic.livejournal.com]

One thing you might ask about in the future is parking. I know that's a contentious subject, but I wonder if, perhaps, there could be ways of making it a win/win... Most of the parking now is 2-hour only, which a lot of people feel isn't enough time. Perhaps some spaces could be set to longer-duration parking at a higher price?

[scott gunther (from livejournal.com)]

Car traffic might be reduced (opening up new possibilities for bikes and pedestrians) if there were clear ways for cars whose final destination is not Davis Square to avoid Davis Square altogether. Is there anyway to direct cars that just want to get through Davis Square toward side streets that will get them to their destination?

[sarahsomerville.livejournal.com]

Hi everyone, thanks very much for your feedback. We've been compiling it and using your ideas to inform our concepts for the square. We are looking forward to our last meeting in the series tomorrow night: August 7th, 6-7:30pm at the TAB. I will post again in this forum to make sure everyone sees it.
Thanks again!
Sarah