This letter will be presented at the Somerville City Council meeting on Thursday February 14, 2019. The deadline for signatures is 3pm on that day. To sign your name onto this letter please click here and fill out the form.
To the Mayor and City Council of Somerville:
Last Friday a Somerville resident, Allison Donovan, was killed on Powder House Blvd while crossing the street. As a Vision Zero city Somerville has committed to doing what it can to bring the number of fatalities and serious injuries on our streets down to zero. This tragedy highlights how far Somerville still needs to go to address these safety issues. Per City Charter Section 8, the below signed residents request that the Administration respond to requests listed and that the City Council arrange for a hearing.
Powder House Blvd was known to residents as a dangerous street before the fatality, and the City started a public process aimed at addressing these concerns. However this process was too slow to prevent a needless death and certain traffic calming measures like a raised intersection were removed from consideration. There are similar traffic safety issues across the city and we need to give them the urgency they deserve.
In order to break out of the cycle of fixing these problems after a person has died, the City needs to take a more proactive approach in preventing injuries and fatalities with the urgency that this demands. City resources are constrained but they are not equitably distributed with a focus on safety. SomerVision calls for 50% of trips to be made with non-car modes of travel. For this to happen, the City must make people feel safe in all modes of travel.
We have developed a list of next steps to help in prioritizing our resources toward safety. The City should:
- Fully address issues raised by constituents regarding the implementation of traffic calming measures on Powder House Boulevard.
- Accelerate plans to redesign Powder House Circle to significantly increase safety for vulnerable road users. Powder House Circle is one of the most dangerous places to walk, bike, or even drive in the City.
- Create a permanent City-staffed Pedestrian and Transit Advisory Committee by June 2019. This was promised for the fall of 2018.
- Add two transportation planners as mid-year hires to help with traffic engineering, and consider the addition of more staff in the FY20 budget cycle.
- Add at least two Somerville police officers to the Traffic Unit to increase enforcement, and regularly report on traffic citations issued (payable and warning). Focus on enforcing speed limits as excessive speeds present a danger to vulnerable road users. Limit the issuance of warnings in favor of citations for speed, crosswalk, and failure to stop/yield violations.
- Identify and publish a list of the most dangerous intersections or streets, including the methodology used to determine the risk, and implement plans for traffic calming on ten miles of street and fifty intersections by the end of the 2019 construction season. Continuously update this list with renovation plans and timelines going forward.
- Create a Chief of the Streets position to drive focus/coordination across the many divisions that handle traffic calming measures and to mitigate the concentration of pressure and accountability of the Director of Infrastructure.
- Create an estimate of spending on the different modes of transportation in the City to understand if we are spending enough to ensure the safety of those who walk, bike, or take transit and to attempt to attain the SomerVision goal of 50% of new trips via transit, bike, or walking.
- Designate funds and develop a rapid-response procedure so that the city can address urgent risks using temporary physical barriers like flex-posts while planning for permanent solutions.
- Support a bill in the state legislature allowing cities to use automated enforcement to address speeding and red light violations.
- Require the use of pedestrian, bicycle, and bus impacts as well as car Level of Service (LOS) when considering impacts of proposed street changes. A LOS of D or lower is acceptable if it allows safety to be prioritized.
We, the undersigned residents and organizations, strongly urge that the Mayor and City Council to act quickly to fulfill its Vision Zero commitment to make traffic injuries and fatalities a thing of the past.
Signed,
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