traffic issues

[jh78.livejournal.com]

My wife and I live on Cedar Street and we are becoming increasingly disturbed by the speed that cars pass through this corridor between Broadway and the bike path.  If you have ever been down Cedar, you will notice that the center yellow line has been painted over, thus giving evidence that the street was not engineered for the two way traffic PLUS parking that exists today.  We have emailed the police department to see if we could get increased patrols in the area for speeding, but we only got one of those signs that tells you how fast you are going.  Yes, we know that we live on a busy street and should deal with it, but the minute someone gets injured crossing the street it will be too late. We are interested to see if anyone has suggestions on how we can get the city to add traffic calming measures here and elsewhere in the city.  Cambridge does it (especially around school zones), but Somerville seems to be lacking in this area.  Any thoughts?

Comments

speed limit sign?

[jspazzer.livejournal.com]

One thing that may help coming from Broadway is if they put up an actual speed limit sign. Without a speed limit sign, the speed limit defaults to 40, or 30 in densely populated areas. That first stretch is not dense, so one could argue that the speed limit is 40. One would probably be wrong, but there are a lot of shallow thinkers out there.

Re: speed limit sign?

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure everything in Somerville that isn't a highway counts as densely populated.

Re: speed limit sign?

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

From http://www.mit.edu/~jfc/ma.html

MGL 90-1 defines: "Thickly settled or business district", the territory contiguous to any way which is built up with structures devoted to business, or the territory contiguous to any way where the dwelling houses are situated at such distances as will average less than two hundred feet between them for a distance of a quarter of a mile or over.

Re: speed limit sign?

[twe.livejournal.com]

I think there *is* one coming from Broadway, and it's 20 mph.