Boston is making strides to address its notorious traffic congestion by introducing thousands of speed humps across small streets in the city. This initiative aims to encourage drivers to slow down, focusing particularly on areas where neighborhood safety is a growing concern.
Unlike other traffic enhancement measures such as bike lanes, which have drawn criticism and debate, the speed humps appear to be generally well-received by residents who are eager to see reduced vehicle speeds in their communities. However, there are fears that the city may be overreacting in its implementation.
A proposal for 110 speed humps in the Bellevue Hill neighborhood of West Roxbury raised alarms even among those who are advocates for traffic calming measures. Although some residents appreciate the intent behind the initiative, the sheer number of speed humps proposed worried many.
Deb Grupp, a resident of Park Street, shared her personal experience of requesting speed humps to curb speeding drivers who frequently use local streets as shortcuts to avoid congestion on nearby Centre Street. Yet, when she looked at the map of the proposed speed humps, she found the thought of traversing 19 humps just to exit her neighborhood overwhelming.
“If done correctly, it slows people down before they get to the stop sign,” said Grupp. “But 100 in Bellevue Hill was so ridiculous. There’s nobody in their right mind that would say yes to that.”
According to city statistics from 2024, Boston experienced 2,078 crashes resulting in injuries, with 16 fatalities, including 12 pedestrian deaths. Thankfully, the numbers signifying these incidents have decreased over the past decade, primarily due to the implementation of traffic calming and safety measures.
Brendan Kearney, the executive director of pedestrian advocacy group WalkMassachusetts, noted significant improvements in street safety following the introduction of speed humps, bike lanes, and “road diets” designed to narrow roadways. Kearney reported a 15% increase in compliance with speed limits on streets where bike lanes and speed humps were introduced, highlighting their effectiveness in ensuring a safer environment for pedestrians and cyclists.
Speed humps in Boston are designed differently from the speed bumps typically found in parking lots. While speed bumps are smaller, speed humps are about 3 inches high and are 12 to 14 feet long, meant for drivers to navigate at speeds up to 20 mph. The city typically builds them in groups, spaced out every 150 to 250 feet, to prevent drivers from speeding up immediately after passing a hump.
Concerns persist among residents about the implications of speed humps on snow plowing, street sweeping, and parking. However, city officials assert that the installation of speed humps does not impact these services.
Currently, Boston’s speed hump program is restricted to small side streets and does not extend to main roads. City Councilor Ed Flynn, however, has expressed the need to reassess this policy, suggesting that traffic calming measures should primarily target high-traffic areas like commercial streets where pedestrian foot traffic often intersects with vehicles.
During a recent City Council hearing concerning planning and transportation, Flynn criticized the speed hump program’s implementation. He argued that the initiative, while well-intentioned, has been executed inappropriately.
“Traffic calming infrastructure should have been placed on main streets, commercial roads, high-traffic corridors where the majority of vehicle and pedestrian foot traffic meet one another. It’s common sense,” Flynn declared.
For the past decade, Boston has implemented safety improvements on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis, demonstrating a successful approach according to Chief of Streets Jascha Franklin-Hodge. He cited a decrease in Emergency Medical Services response times alongside a decline in pedestrian fatalities, despite the fact that such fatalities have increased across the nation.
Last year, the city announced plans for the installation of over 2,000 speed humps over several years, as part of the “Safety Surge” program. The city prioritized areas for this initiative based on crash data and local demographics, paying particular attention to neighborhoods with higher populations of children, seniors, and individuals with disabilities.
From 2016 to 2022, Boston saw the installation of roughly 300 speed humps. In 2023, that number increased to 312, and by the following year, there were more than 600 installations.
Franklin-Hodge emphasized the equitable distribution of speed humps across all city council districts, ensuring that neighborhoods with vulnerable populations receive focused attention rather than merely fulfilling requests from the most vocal residents.
“We are going to the places where we have the most vulnerable people, and that’s where we’re delivering this service first,” Franklin-Hodge affirmed.
However, in a recent turn of events, Franklin-Hodge mentioned a revision of their strategy to better balance safety with community needs. The Office of Neighborhood Services is now communicating with residents in areas eligible for speed humps to gather their feedback.
The redesigned plans aim to install only the necessary number of speed humps to achieve safe driving speeds while establishing support from the local community and city councilors before construction commences.
Despite Flynn’s proposals, the city is sticking to its focus on side streets. Franklin-Hodge elaborated that many main roads are classified as arterial routes, crucial for emergency vehicle access. Both the Boston Fire Department and Emergency Medical Services requested that no raised elements be placed on these main roads.
The rationale behind this is to protect residential neighborhoods that drivers often use as cut-throughs to avoid main streets. Franklin-Hodge explained, “It used to be that, navigating the maze that is Boston, typically if you were driving on a residential street, either you lived in the neighborhood or you knew the neighborhood well enough to know how to navigate it.”
This familiarity was expected to promote more cautious driving behavior. However, the introduction of navigation apps has changed the landscape; now residential streets are frequently used by drivers unfamiliar with the area, leading to more careless driving habits.
In at least one instance, speed humps installed in the past year were subsequently removed following complaints from local drivers. On Allandale Street in Jamaica Plain, 13 humps installed in January were dismantled less than a month later due to concerns that they were too closely spaced, unintentionally impeding traffic flow, especially for ambulances heading to Faulkner Hospital.
City officials are also reviewing other recent changes to Boston’s roads, including the implementation of bus and bike lanes. According to Kearney of WalkMassachusetts, while speed humps are a beneficial tool, they are not a standalone solution.
“It’s not a silver bullet,” Kearney stated. “It’s just another tool that the planners and engineers can use to talk to community members about the places that they feel unsafe.”
Grupp acknowledged that residents had been informed the speed humps could be removed if they posed significant issues later on. However, she expressed a desire for alternative traffic management solutions, such as designating some small streets as one-way to help calm traffic or reallocating funds to mend other pressing issues like potholes.
“Why even go through that?” she questioned. “Just fill the potholes.”
image source from：masslive
