Boston traffic safety: Are thousands of new speed humps the right solution?

One way Boston is trying to tame its infamously unruly traffic problem is by installing thousands of speed humps on small streets around the city to force drivers to slow down.

Unlike some other traffic safety measures, such as bike lanes, which have sparked strong debate, many residents are happy to see cars slowing down in their neighborhoods. But even still, some worry the city is being too overzealous with the speed humps.

In the Bellevue Hill neighborhood of West Roxbury, an initial proposal from the city called for 110 speed humps caused alarm even among neighbors, even among those who supported the traffic-calming measures.

It now seems unlikely that many speed humps will be installed. A spokesperson for the Boston Transportation Department said that all areas eligible for speed humps are under review to better match the needs of residents.

Deb Grupp, who lives on Park Street, said she had personally requested speed humps to address speeding drivers using the otherwise quiet streets as a cut-through to avoid traffic on nearby Centre Street. But using the map of the proposed speed humps, she counted 19 that she would have to traverse just to get out of her neighborhood.

“If done correctly, it slows people down before they get to the stop sign,” Grupp said. “But 100 in Bellevue Hill was so ridiculous. There’s nobody in their right mind that would say yes to that.”

12 pedestrian deaths in 2024

According to city data, in 2024, there were 2,078 crashes where a person was injured, 16 of which were fatal. Of those, 466 involved a pedestrian and 366 involved a bicyclist. Twelve of the deaths were pedestrians.

Over the past decade, those numbers have come down significantly, due in large part to traffic calming and street safety measures such as speed humps, bike lanes and “road diets” that make roads narrower, Brendan Kearney, executive director of pedestrian advocacy group WalkMassachusetts, said.

City staff found last year that on streets where bike lanes were installed, compliance with the speed limit increased about 15%, with the greatest results on streets that also had speed humps installed.

“They were actually making the streets safer for everyone,” Kearney said. “By slowing the people going faster than conditions allow and above the speed limit, some of those projects were actually just making it safer for people to be able to cross the street.”

Speed “humps” differ from the speed “bumps” typically found in parking lots due to their size, according to the city. Humps are about 3 inches high and 12 to 14 feet long and are intended for cars to drive over at up to 20 miles per hour. They are built only in groups, typically every 150 to 250 feet, so drivers do not immediately speed up after passing them.

Though a common concern voiced by residents is the impact on snow plowing, street sweeping or street parking, the city says speed humps do not affect any of these.

Boston side streets focus of speed hump program

Currently, only small side streets are eligible for speed humps, not main roads. However, City Councilor Ed Flynn has called for a revision of this policy, saying during a City Council hearing of the Committee on Planning, Development and Transportation this month that while the speed hump program had been established with “the best of intentions … it was implemented in the exact opposite way it should have been.”

“Traffic calming infrastructure should have been placed on main streets, commercial roads, high-traffic corridors where the majority of vehicle and pedestrian foot traffic meet one another. It’s common sense,” Flynn said. “Instead of putting a few of these raised crosswalks, speed humps and pedestrian islands on the streets in strategic spots of high foot traffic, the city has put dozens of them on side streets.”

Boston had been making safety improvements like installing speed humps on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis over the last decade, with positive results, Chief of Streets Jascha Franklin-Hodge said during the same hearing. The city has seen Emergency Medical Services response times decrease and a downward trend in pedestrian fatalities, despite a rise in fatalities across the country.

‘Safety surge’ calls for 2,000 speed humps

Last year, the city announced it would be installing more than 2,000 speed humps over the next few years as part of the “Safety Surge” program. Areas were prioritized based on crash data and local demographics, with neighborhoods with higher numbers of children, seniors and people with disabilities placed higher on the list.

Between 2016 and 2022, a total of about 300 speed humps were installed throughout Boston. In 2023, 312 were installed, and last year, there were more than 600.

Franklin-Hodge told WBUR when Safety Surge was launched that speed humps would be spread throughout every city council district to be sure the city was distributing them fairly, rather than prioritizing places with “the people who ask for things or who have the strongest voice and know how to get a hold of folks in the city.”

“We are going to the places where we have the most vulnerable people, and that’s where we’re delivering this service first,” Franklin-Hodge told the radio station.

Since then, however, they have revised their strategy. Franklin-Hodge said at this month’s hearing that his office is now evaluating how to balance safety with community priorities.

Liaisons from the Office of Neighborhood Services are connecting with residents in communities eligible for speed humps to get their comments. Streets are being redesigned based on residents’ needs, with only as many humps as needed to achieve safe speeds. They are also seeking support from neighbors and the city councilors representing them before construction begins.

They are still sticking to side streets, however, despite Flynn’s requests otherwise.

Franklin-Hodge told the councilor during the hearing that many of those roads are “arterial,” meaning they are critical paths for emergency vehicles, and his office had received requests from both the Boston Fire Department and Emergency Medical Services that there be no raised elements on main roads.

The focus, instead, is still on residential neighborhoods that many drivers use as cut-throughs.

“It used to be that, navigating the maze that is Boston, typically if you were driving on a residential street, either you lived in the neighborhood or you knew the neighborhood well enough to know how to navigate it,” Franklin-Hodge said. “And that meant a little bit more of a connection to the place and often a little bit more care and caution.”

“With navigation apps, now these are streets that anyone, whether they live in Boston or not, whether they’re commuting, whether they’re delivering, people can use our neighborhood streets, and often when they do, they don’t drive like they live here,” he continued.

Speed humps removed

In at least one instance in the past year, speed humps installed by the city have subsequently been removed because of complaints from drivers.

On Allandale Street in Jamaica Plain, near Faulkner Hospital, a series of 13 speed humps installed in January were taken out less than a month later. City officials said the humps had been placed too close together and slowed down traffic more than necessary, particularly for ambulances headed to the hospital.

City officials have also said they would be reviewing other changes to Boston streets that have been made in recent years, including bus and bike lanes.

“It’s not a silver bullet,” said Kearney, of WalkMassachusetts. “It’s just another tool that the planners and engineers can use to talk to community members about the places that they feel unsafe.”

Grupp said she and her neighbors were told that if the speed humps were installed and became an issue, the city could later take them out. But she said she would rather the city make some of the small streets one-way to calm traffic, or spend the money to fix other issues.

“Why even go through that?” she said. “Just fill the potholes.”

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