At the September 22 City Council regular meeting, I enthusiastically co-sponsored an order introduced by City Council President and Ward 3 Councilor Ben Ewen-Campen asking the Police Department to change strategy and focus on issuing monetary citations for motor vehicle violations, particularly dangerous behavior like speeding and running stop signs and red lights. In recent years the department had embraced an educational approach that primarily issued warning citations -- typically around 90 percent of the time! -- rather than monetary fines. While well intentioned, this strategy doesn't seem to have done much to quell the increasing chaos and danger on our streets as a result of scofflaw drivers who apparently fear no reprisal. So it's time to try something different: real enforcement with consequences.

I'd be remiss to not mention that enforcement has been shown to be not nearly as effective when it comes to street safety as the design of the environment. So implementing traffic calming measures and physical and visual changes to our streets is absolutely the best practice in the long run. But that is going to take time, so in the meantime we can at least have some accountability for drivers who show a disregard for our laws designed to keep everyone safe.

Anytime we talk about driver behavior, we tend to get whataboutism about cyclists not following the rules of the road. So I want to be clear that while we need everyone -- drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians -- to recognize that we're trying to have a civilization here and do better, cyclists and pedestrians aren't piloting two-ton objects unsafely around our city. So I'm focusing here on the biggest threat to safety on our streets: bad-actor motor vehicle operators. 

People are dying on streets in our region at an alarming rate, and we need to change driver behavior yesterday. A lot of these problem drivers are merely cutting through Somerville without stopping here at all, and looking to get through our city as quickly as possible. When Interstate 93 fills up, commuters pour onto state highways that cut through our city. And when those fill up, Wave and Google Maps are happy to send them zipping through a winding course of our neighborhood residential streets. These cut-through commuters don't care about our community or keeping our streets safe; just about getting from Point A to Point B in as little time as possible. And Somerville pays the price in traffic, pollution, street surface repairs, and most of all street safety.

The Police Department's Traffic Unit recently indicated a willingness to work with City Councilors by doing directed enforcement in areas identified by councilors as problems. I welcome this collaboration and have already contacted the Commander of the Traffic Unit to request directed enforcement areas already identified in which I'd like to see this enforcement focus carried out. If you would like to see targeted traffic enforcement in a particular area of the city, please fill out this form and I'll work with the ward councilor and Traffic Unit to make that happen.

Meanwhile, I'll keep advocating for bringing camera traffic enforcement to Somerville. I've done pretty extensive legwork on this, but it really needs mayoral backing to move ahead. If you'd like to see camera traffic enforcement here, please contact [email protected] and convey your support for this.