Addressing rampant speeding and traffic concerns in the city has been a top goal for the city council and the mayor in recent years.
Monday night, Police Chief David Callahan and several other department heads appeared before the council to discuss steps they are taking to deal with the issue.
“I filed this motion for the many, many residents who call us or communicate with us about speeding issues, traffic violations, and just overall public safety with all of the vehicles on the road,” said Council President Anthony Cogliandro.
Callahan said the number one complaint the police department gets is about speeding vehicles in the city.
“It’s very challenging for us, and I would say that since Covid, it’s been a major complaint throughout the city,” said Callahan.
Callahan said the department is trying to pick up its numbers to get its enforcement levels back to where they were before the pandemic.
In addition, the chief said his department is working with the city’s public works and engineering departments to look at alternative ways to slow traffic, including more speed bumps, speed humps, and speed tables.
“On our end, we are trying to pick up enforcement,” said Callahan. “Right now, we have two people in the traffic unit … and they are focusing on areas where we have substantial problems, such as Squire Road, where we had an unfortunate pedestrian accident a little while back.”
The chief said the department is trying to increase its staffing, and is looking to add an additional officer to the traffic department when the most recent round of recruits graduate from the police academy.
Callahan said the department is call-driven, with over 30,000 calls per year, which can limit the amount of resources it can dedicate to traffic enforcement.
Public works director Chris Ciaramella said the public works department is focusing on ways it can help address speeding concerns and work with the police department. He said he has been in touch with a company that can install temporary speed humps that can be removed in the winter to help alleviate concerns with plowing city streets.
Ciaramella said the public works department also recently received five speed radar signs that can be deployed throughout the city. Ward 5 Councillor Angela Guarino-Sawaya said she would like to see one of the signs placed on Sagamore Street, while Councillor-at-Large Robert Haas, III asked that one be located near the senior center on Winthrop Avenue.
“There are a lot of challenges to installing the speed calming measures, so I just want to make sure everyone is aware that we can’t always place these types of things in the exact location where we would want to because of how they would affect driveways and street intersections and drainage on the street,” said city engineer Nick Rystrom. “If we are looking at putting these types of traffic calming measures out, it may not be exactly the location we are thinking, it might be 50 feet this way or 100 feet that way.”
