By Meredith McCulloch
On May 15, 2017, the Selectmen began discussing the implementation of a change in local speed limits. Last spring at the 2017 Annual Town Meeting voters approved acceptance of the Municipal Modernization Act. It allows the Selectmen to establish lower limits than the 30mph which is standard statewide.
The Selectmen can establish a standard 25mph speed limit unless another limit is posted. If adopted signs on all roads entering town would say ““Thickly Settled, 25 mph speed limit townwide unless posted otherwise.” Currently, all Bedford streets are either in fact thickly settled or are already posted with different speed limits.All the arterial roads leading into town are posted. Some areas of town, such as the Veteran’s Administration Hospital grounds, may require a 20mph limit.
To determine if a different speed is called, for a traffic study would be done to determine the speed most drivers travel. According to Town Manager Richard Reed “It is a traffic engineering principle that 85% of the drivers travel at a safe speed.”
The Selectmen will be providing an opportunity for community input based on recommendations from the Department of Public Works. Please see the attached map showing current speed limits.
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…except that those traffic studies always yield deceiving results, since the roads are already posted at low limits and everyone stomps on the brakes to go even slower than those limits when they see parked police cruisers clocking traffic speeds. When I cycle, I’d far prefer traffic that rolls past me at a safe speed to congested, underspeed vehicles that linger alongside me at speeds dangerously close to mine.
That said, having the limit of 40mph on The Great Road from the Lexington line all the way up to where the first 35 sign is now is insane. It used to drop down to 35 well before Shawsheen, and it needs to once again.
“It is a traffic engineering principle that 85% of the drivers travel at a safe speed.”
If that’s the case, then why hasn’t the speed limit on Route 3 been changed to 75? More seriously, I wonder if there’s any mechanism that could be used to *slow* traffic…