With the Red Line shut down north of Kendall for repairs I've been walking to the Green Line at Ball Sq. It's definitely a slower commute, but it's not bad. Except for 150 painful feet.
Here's how I walk to the station (240ft):
And here's what I want to do (90ft):
They've put up enough of a fence to keep a desire path from forming, but it still bugs me.
Looking at the plans from 2019 you can see how it ended up this way:
Without the crosswalks marked it's much less obvious that you're making a bunch of people walk around three sides of a square. And this crosswalk didn't even exist before the station:
This does actually affect a good number of people. Here's my estimate for the houses where this adds 150ft when walking to the platform:
Unfortunately I don't think the cost of adding a second, slightly shorter, path would be worth it now that we've already built it out differently, but this is something to keep in mind for grouping with future renovations.