For a decade I have been working on traffic calming policy. While we may want to slow down cut through traffic in our neighborhoods, emergency vehicles need to get to our homes quickly. Balancing these needs is a process of negotiation involving the police, fire, and public works departments and the traffic engineer and the neighborhoods.

I was on the Task Force at the time we needed to build another middle school. We chose the location next to Brown Middle School after much debate. However, one looming problem was the traffic at the intersection on Wheeler and Meadowbrook Roads. There would be hundreds of pedestrians in that location and lots of cars including commuter cut through traffic. Having attended conferences on traffic calming and other traffic management tools, when the concept of a round-a-bout was proposed by our traffic engineer I was very excited about the possibility. There was no example existing in Massachusetts at the time. I organized a visit to Montpelier Vermont to meet with the Commissioner of the State Dept of Trans where a round-a-bout had been implemented. A round-a-bout facilitates pedestrian crossing and is not built like a rotary.

After nearly four years of advocating for and educating all the parties involved, as our new Oak Hill Middle School opened, we had built the first round-a-bout in the state of Massachusetts.

Nearly a decade later we have developed a policy to allow us to implement traffic calming where appropriate. There are now several locations in the city where traffic calming approaches are being built. There are raised crosswalks on Woodland Road in Auburndale and near the Brimmer and May School in Chestnut Hill. There is a proposal for a different design for Daniel St and Langley Road in Newton Center, and finally the design for Fuller Street is being constructed.