Councillor Fiore Wants Traffic Officers at North Shore Road/Revere Street intersection

Ward 5 Councillor Al Fiore is requesting that two traffic officers be stationed on weekdays at the intersection of North Shore Road and Revere Street to help with the flow of traffic.

“It can take 20 minutes to get from the old Sullivan Park or the beach or five traffic cycles down to the corner of Revere Street and North Shore Road – and that affects the people on the Boulevard, the people in the Point of Pines, the people of Oak Island, and it’s just not just a summer issue, it’s a year-round issue,” said Fiore. “Conversely on the other side, Revere Street can back up all the way to St. Anthony’s Church.”

Fiore requested that Revere Police Chief David Callahan deploy the officers or the MBTA or State Police to assign officers their between 3:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. each weekday.

“It is a quality-of-life issue. I am in full favor of this motion,” said Councillor-at-Large Steven Morabito.

Ward 2 Councillor Ira Novoselsky said, “This has been a burden for all my folks in Ward 2 trying to get north during those hours and seeing the traffic back up North Shore Road and VFW Parkway is unbelievable. It’s a good idea [to have officers at the intersection] and I hope it works.”

Councillor-at-Large Dan Rizzo said he’s been trying to address the traffic bottleneck “for decades.”

“We really do need to do something,” said Rizzo. “This is a real quality-of-life issue. It takes somebody from the Point of Pines to get down to the center of the city sometimes 30-40 minutes. That’s just not right. If it works as Councillor Morabito alluded to, with the MBTA Police during the construction of that garage, it can work now. It’s just a matter of having the will to put those police down there and pull traffic.”

Councillor-at-Large Marc Silvestri supported the motion and asked that the issue of traffic congestion also be addressed at the traffic lights coming off Beach Street, near the Dunkin Donuts store on Shirley Avenue, where motorists sometimes are caught in the middle of the intersection during traffic light changes.

Fiore was elected to the Council in November and the busy intersection was one of the key issues cited by Ward 5 residents. One meeting into his return to the Council, Fiore has the support of his colleagues in meeting the issue head on.

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