ORDER-2017-31 : Acceptance of MGL Chapter 90, Section 17C, as amended by Chapter 218 of the Acts of 2016, to reduce the prima facie speed limit in the City of Melrose to 25 miles per hour.

Transcript (~12 min @ 23:30)

Speakers identified by voice; unnamed voices are numbered within this recording. Auto-caption text — verify against the video.

▶ 23:26 Speaker 6: order 2017-31 acceptance of massachusetts general laws chapter 90 section 17c as amended by chapter 218 of the acts of 2016 to reduce the prima facie speed limit in the city of melrose to 25 miles per

▶ 23:42 Speaker 2: hour this order comes to us recommended by the legal and legislative committee alderman wright

▶ 23:53 Speaker 2: motion for passage second alderman wright moves for passage of the order the motion is seconded by alderman mortimer is there any discussion relative to the order alderman

▶ 24:01 Gail Infurna: inferno thank you um just for a couple of things as a member as the member of the traffic commission here um this will be on the traffic commission's agenda just to kind of have a discussion on it and that will be the third wednesday in december i believe is our next meeting and if i could just take a moment of personal privilege to address somebody that spoke this this earlier this evening regarding clifton street being one way the traffic commission did look at that several years ago not to say that we wouldn't look at it again i can't remember the the exact discussion of it but it was something that the traffic commission as well as the neighbors did not want so if i could just

▶ 24:43 Speaker 2: make that point any further discussion relative to this order alvin ford thank you mr president

▶ 24:47 Scott M. Forbes: i was not at the uh previous meeting when this was ordered in in committee i just want to say that i am in support of the the 25 mile an hour speed limit um last week i was able to sit on my porch on mystic ave i did not go into work this that morning i was surprised to see 15 cars come down my street in about a 45 minute time period average speed limit about 30 miles an hour you cannot go more than 20 miles an hour down that street i've lived on that street my entire life it's heavily congested with kids more and more we are seeing people use melrose as a cut through community to get to their places of business two weeks ago i happened to go down howard street just as an experiment to see how fast the acceptable rate of speed actually is I was surprised to see myself going well over 40 miles an hour I know we're on the highways we see a 55 to 65 mile an hour speed limit we all go 75 to 80 miles an hour it's the acceptable rate of speed that's way everybody is going and we seem to justify that problem is is that we've taken that same highway mentality on to our side streets the difference is is that you don't have houses full of families and children on these side streets when you're on the highway this is the first step in the something that we need to focus on 25 miles an hour is is step number one but it has to go further from there so I hope to be working with members of the traffic committee I think all options read at this point in time are are on the table to make our streets a little bit safer Thank You mr. president you Alderman

▶ 26:25 Monica C. Medeiros: I have Alderman Medeiros for the first time I see Alderman Wright the maker of

▶ 26:30 Speaker 2: the order I defer to him Alderman Wright for the second time thank you

▶ 26:32 Francis X. Wright Jr.: Mr. President, thank you, Alderman Medeiros. We've spoken on this at some length in the committee. I just wanted to reiterate as the maker of this that since I filed it, I've received a lot of communication, e-mail, telephone calls, et cetera, all in support, which is unusual. We usually receive some level of contact on both sides of issues. Since that time, some of the information I've received, I've looked at, and as one of the speakers indicated this evening, that apparently a pedestrian hit at about 40 miles an hour has a 90% chance of not surviving, whereas one hit at about 20, 25 miles an hour has a 90% chance of surviving. so for that reason and for all the other reasons we've heard related as the speakers have said today all them in Forbes is noted a lot of cut through traffic keeps going faster and faster I know the mayor's and the chief are willing to and ready to step up and do an enforcement campaign I think that this is a is a first step I think that you know attitudes have to change I think our actions have to change we all need to allow a few extra minutes five minutes in the morning five minutes in the evening to get home get to where we're going and we can make this work we can make Melrose a safer place to walk

▶ 28:20 Monica C. Medeiros: to bike to cross the street thank you thank you you know in in committee I expressed my opposition to this which remains I I understand and sympathize with the desire to make Melrose safer and to reduce the speeding that's on the streets I don't really believe that reducing the speed limit citywide to 25 miles per hour accomplishes that and as i mentioned in the committee meeting i think in fact it could very well lead to increased road rage the problems that we have on many of the

▶ 28:57 Monica C. Medeiros: streets are people going a lot faster than the posted speed limits or the current standard speed limit of thickly settled district of 30 miles per hour and it's the exception not the rule of the people who are really the problem i know a couple of people have mentioned the traffic deaths and of course we're all concerned about that but i don't believe that in either case it's been determined that speed was an issue i know that in one of them one of the issues was solar glare

▶ 29:34 Monica C. Medeiros: and some of these things you know sometimes we can't necessarily control as much as we would like to there are other things that i think we can do to be more effective to reduce the speeds on our roads and some of them have been mentioned tonight some of them are traffic calming issues like just sometimes as simple as repaving the road sometimes it's areas that need reconstruction inevitably money becomes an issue and how we how would we pay to do that but certainly maybe we should be looking a lot more at repaving roads um sorry not at repaving roads re restriping roads we've seen the lindfels parkway in recent weeks has been repainted to create a bike lane that's actually painted and the road has been narrowed and i know that i don't feel as comfortable going as fast on that road as a result of those new line markings i think there's other ways to accomplish this other than reducing the speed limit i think we have an issue already with the speed limit not

▶ 30:44 Monica C. Medeiros: being enforced and i don't really see how dropping it five miles per hour will change that much i think we'll see a lot of people speeding and so we'll either have a situation where we have a speed limit that's not enforced or selectively enforced or as it will be enforced i think we'll have a lot of residents pretty upset that they're getting tickets for going you know 31 or 36 miles per hour and their their rates of insurance and everything else will go up so i don't think this

▶ 31:22 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: is a good idea did you wish to speak no i'm okay um thank you mr chairman um i i am going to support this order and um uh thank alderman wright for bringing it forward um as part of the new municipal uh changes that are available to us um i live very close to ms gollum and um i live right off the lindfels parkway and i can tell you that although some people might not feel as comfortable going as fast plenty of people still do plenty of people cut around me when i'm turning left into my street and go into the bike lane thank goodness there are no bikers there at the moment to to pass me on the right i think this is and can be an effective pretty much low-cost way of starting to look at a more comprehensive plan and I do agree that we need you know a little bit more attention and maybe people will have to pay fines and maybe we'll have some revenue that we can put towards restriping certain areas and and redoing certain traffic islands and putting up better signage so people will know exactly how to make turns in a safe manner I would ask through the through you mr. president to a representative on the traffic commission several people have asked me about specific roads and whether or not they will be part of this 25 mile an hour limit and I just wonder if the traffic commission if our representative can identify those roads

▶ 33:01 Speaker 2: and well I think this just changes the default speed limit for roads that are not posted from 25 from 30 to 25 right right roads with specific designations

▶ 33:13 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: would not be changed by this would not be changed so perhaps we need to ask our traffic commission to look at some of those roads and see if they can be included in this in some fashion down the whip down the road I mean I don't know about howard street i do know it's it's definitely a speedway in the morning and in the evening and i believe there are parts of it that are posted at a higher limit i'm not certain i certainly know that the lindfels parkway is and we all know that that's kind of a thorn in our side as far as enforcement but i do think that it is a good start and i do believe as one of our speaker said if i've been really trying very hard to drive 25 and i think if we all get in the habit of it we will find that um it becomes a community effort and a peer pressure effort and people will slow down and maybe the people who are using mirrors as a cut through will decide that they can't do it any as effectively or they won't be saving as much time or they'll be costing them money if they speed through our community so i'm happy to be supporting this tonight thank you thank

▶ 34:23 Speaker 2: you one thing that the public needs to know is the lindfels parkway is not a melrose city road we always talk about the lindfels parkway when we're talking about speed enforcement and things of that nature and just so as not to confuse the public the lindfels parkway is under the jurisdiction of the commonwealth not the city of melrose alderman wright thank you mr president

▶ 34:44 Francis X. Wright Jr.: just to follow up on uh alderman mcdermott my goals his comments it's my understanding that this speed limit could or would apply to all streets and roads in the city other than those as uh president khan indicated that are posted as we but they have to be as a result of a speed zone study that the department of transportation would have issued at some point in the past so uh i think we need to confirm that maybe either through the traffic commission or maybe through

▶ 35:19 Speaker 2: the city solicitor's office thank you thank you anything else on this order ms o'shea could you

▶ 35:27 Speaker 1: call the roll please album brazil yes yes alderman forbes yes yes all of an inferno yes yes all of lemmerman yes yes all of them in mcateen my goals yes yes all the maderas no no all the way mortimer yes yes alderman Tramontozzi yes yes alderman wright yes yes alderman's record yes yes president

▶ 35:52 Speaker 6: khan yes yes 10 years that order passes order 2017-32 acceptance of massachusetts general laws chapter 60 section 3f as amended by chapter 141 of the acts of 2016 section 12 to place on the property tax bills or motor vehicle excise tax bills a check off for taxpayers to donate to a veterans assistance fund to assess excuse me to assist veterans and their dependents in need