With cars accelerating past him, delivery man Kevin Partridge walked perilously on the street amongst the Huntington Avenue traffic yesterday.
A portion of the sidewalk in front of the Museum of Fine Arts was closed for construction.
It didn’t make any sense, Partridge said, that the sidewalk between two college campuses and in front of one of the city’s top attractions would be closed off to pedestrians.
“I think it’s a pain in the [expletive],” he said as he pulled his dolly behind him.
Partridge was not alone.
Many pedestrians walked on a foot-wide strip of muddied grass with a plastic orange fence on one side and traffic on the other. When there wasn’t enough room on the strip of grass, some, like Jennie Yu, took to the street.
“People choose what works,” said the Northeastern University graduate student. She dodged more than one car when she bent down in the roadway to pick up something that fell as she walked.
There are signs at either end of the block that warn pedestrians that the sidewalk ahead is closed.
Although they chose not to heed the sign’s warning, some people admitted the danger.
“It is kind of dangerous. You could fall and get creamed,” said Kimberly Gatti, who visited the MFA yesterday.
Other pedestrians walked through the construction fence and across the lawn of the museum to avoid the traffic.
“I didn’t feel it was safe the way Boston traffic is,” said Alan Beck of Waltham who also visited the MFA with his sister. “I’d rather get in trouble walking along the grass than have my sister fall and get hit.”
A spokeswoman for the MFA said the project was not part of the museum’s renovation and was being done by the city. A spokeswoman for the city was trying to find information on the project yesterday, but did not get back by press time.
