Should jaywalking fines be taken off the books?

Jaywalking laws are rarely enforced in Massachusetts, state Rep. Mike Connolly of Cambridge told GBH’s Morning Edition Tuesday.

And while drivers often complain about people crossing the street without the right of way — and jokes about jaywalking being the Massachusetts state sport abound — Connolly said he sees other ways forward.

“If people are doing something openly and notoriously for decades and there is no criminal prosecution, then it's hard to see how anyone could ever be held responsible for doing that,” Connolly said.

Current Massachusetts state law sets low fines for people who cross a street outside of a crosswalk or pedestrian stop light: $1 for a first, second or third offense within a calendar year, and $2 for the fourth offense onward.

But Connolly said those fines are never issued in some communities.

“In Boston, in Cambridge and Somerville, if you go looking through the data, it is not being cited,” he said, noting that one Somerville lieutenant said there hadn’t been any citations since the 1970s. “And so it's hard to see, really, what purpose this is currently serving on the books.”

In other states, jaywalking laws are sometimes enforced inequitably, Connolly said. A study by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area found that, over a two-year period, more than a third of jaywalking citations Long Beach police issued went to Black adults, though Black people make up only 11% of the adult population.

The conversation began when Connolly responded to a tweet from GBH’s Morning Edition co-host Jeremy Siegel, who asked his followers whether people should be legally allowed to jaywalk when there’s no oncoming traffic.

Connolly responded that the case for removing jaywalking fines from the books seems strong.

But speaking with GBH News, he also recognized the importance of safe streets. Car-related deaths have become more common: WalkMassachusetts found pedestrian deaths were up 35% in 2022.

“Especially since the pandemic, the road safety conditions have truly worsened. And so I think there are concerns there,” Connolly said.

He added that our streets “need a lot of work.”

“There’s a lot of places where there should be a crosswalk and there isn’t a crosswalk,” Connolly said. “And it’s really not fair to make people struggle in that way.”

Somerville, part of Connolly’s district, is considering changing its jaywalking regulations. Under a previous law, people were required to cross the street using a marked crosswalk if there was one within 300 feet. New regulations would make that distance only 150 feet, meaning pedestrians would not be required to travel to faraway crosswalks.

The answer, Connolly said, may lie in the difficult work of creating a less car-centric culture in the Boston area.

“In places like the Netherlands, jaywalking is an unknown concept. They don’t have these laws,” he said. “I think, as a state legislator, my biggest focus really is investment in infrastructure. ... I don’t think the focus should be on criminalizing this sort of conduct. I think the focus should be on investment and education.”

Connolly said he has no immediate plans to file legislation taking jaywalking fines off the books. But he’ll be keeping an eye on the subject, he said.

“The issues that I wake up thinking about are the housing emergency, the transportation disaster, the climate crisis, wealth inequality,” Connolly said. “But this engagement just over the past 24 hours has definitely given me a chance to understand, you know, some of the concerns here.”