This week, the Boston City Council held a hearing on Docket No. 0266 – Pedestrian Safety, Traffic Calming, and Expanding the Safety Surge Program. We emphatically support greater investment in pedestrian safety, which also benefits cyclists and motor vehicle drivers. Our comments for the hearing are below and also available as a PDF as submitted.
9 June 2025
BY ELECTRONIC MAIL ONLY (ccc.plandev@boston.gov)
Boston City Council
Committee on Planning, Development, and Transportation
Boston City Hall, Fifth Floor
Boston, Massachusetts 02201
RE: Submittal on Hearing Orders
Docket No. 0266 – Pedestrian Safety/Traffic Calming/Expanding the Safety Surge Program
Docket No. 0423 – Effectiveness of Speed Bumps in Boston
To Chair Durkan and Members of the Committee on Planning, Development, and Transportation:
Please accept the following submittal with respect to the referenced hearing orders, to be considered before your committee today:
Docket No. 0266 – Pedestrian Safety, Traffic Calming, and Expanding the Safety Surge Program
As an organization, WalkUP Roslindale has always been committed to safer streets and has always supported the implementation of street improvements that increase pedestrian and bicycle-user safety, promote better transit service, and calm traffic. Since our founding a decade ago, we have consistently stated our deeply-held belief that everyone in Boston deserves to live, work, and play on a safe street. Everyone in every neighborhood, with no exceptions. We have accordingly been strongly supportive of the safety surge pursued by the Wu Administration over the last 24 months and are strongly supportive of expanding the overall traffic calming program, especially the rapid installation of speed humps on a wide variety of streets and locations citywide, because speed humps are instantly and durably effective and slowing motor vehicle speeds is THE single best and most effective way to improve street safety for everyone, especially those outside of motor vehicles. In this context, it is critical that the committee and the City Council at large always bear in mind the following graphic when they are considering budget and regulatory support for street safety improvements of all kinds:
Our citywide default speed limit of 25 mph, which is the speed to which the speed humps installed in the city are set, is accordingly slightly higher than what our target maximum speed should be, but it is clearly far better than the old rule speed limit of 30 mph, which is 9 times deadlier for pedestrians than 20 mph. Simply put, speed seriously injures and kills and if we want safer streets, we need to do everything we can to have streets that are designed to lower motor vehicle speeds.
Docket No. 0423 – Effectiveness of Speed Bumps in Boston
By way of introduction to our comments on this order, we are interpreting it to apply to what are generally considered “speed humps,” which are generally more sloping and less severe in slowing vehicle speeds than “speed bumps,” because we frankly are not aware of speed bumps being installed on any public street in this city, while speed humps, as noted above, have been installed in a wide variety of locations all across the city as part of the Wu Administration’s safety surge over the last 24 months. Assuming that the hearing order applies to speed humps, we hereby reiterate our unequivocal support for their implementation and installation on a citywide basis as soon as humanly possible. They are clearly effective at slowing vehicle speeds, they do not require the removal of any parking spaces, and they can be installed quickly, without having to account for drainage and other utility relocation concerns that can accompany the installation of similar interventions such as raised intersections/crosswalks. Speed humps are, in our view, the single most effective and easily implementable-at-scale vehicle speed reduction and traffic calming measure available. We have seen speed humps installed on streets all across Roslindale and have experienced first-hand how effective they are at calming traffic and keeping it calm. We particularly call attention to their broadly hailed success on streets such as South Street, Firth Road, Canterbury Street, and Poplar Street, where drivers would routinely speed down long blocks and significantly exceed the citywide speed limit of 25 mph. Installing speed humps has been a widely popular, game-changing improvement to many of our neighborhood’s streets. More of this, please!
Sincerely yours,
WalkUP Roslindale Board of Directors
About WalkUP Roslindale
WalkUP Roslindale, which takes its name from the international movement to foster “Walkable Urban Places,” is a collaborative group of residents and business owners dedicated to making Roslindale the most walkable neighborhood in Boston. We advocate for more housing of all types and at all levels of affordability as well as improvements to our public and private built environment that strengthen walking, cycling, transit, and other forms of active mobility as means toward better personal and public health, safety, social capital, economic development, and environmental sustainability. We are led by a board of directors of about just over twenty individuals and have over 800 additional supporters. More information about WalkUP Roslindale and our initiatives can be found at www.walkuproslindale.org.
Copy (by email) to:
Michelle Wu, Mayor (mayor@boston.gov)
Jascha Franklin-Hodge, Chief of Streets (jascha.franklin-hodge@boston.gov)
Enrique Pepén, City Councilor, District 5 (enrique.pepen@boston.gov)
Josh McCorkle, ONS Representative, Roslindale (josh.mccorkle@boston.gov)
Cora Montrond, Boston City Council Staff (cora.montrond@boston.gov)