For the past 20 years, town officials and committee volunteers have sought ways to mitigate residents’ concerns about speeding and traffic volume on White Street, which includes one of Belmont’s neighborhood elementary schools.
“There are limited things we can do,” Select Board Chair Elizabeth Dionne said at a recent board meeting. “Whatever we can do to calm traffic, we will, but we are not allowed, under state and federal regulations, to prohibit certain types of traffic without a number of procedures and thresholds, which we are about 99.9% unlikely to meet.”
In particular, she said, given White Street — which runs from Trapelo Road to Belmont Street — is a connecting street between Watertown and Belmont, the town cannot prohibit truck traffic. Roughly two decades ago, the town made changes to pedestrian walkways and crossings to make walking safer. Additionally, portions of the street closer to Butler Elementary School now have flashing red lights at some intersections.
“The last piece in that puzzle has been some speed-calming traffic tables,” Dionne said. “Those have been introduced in other parts of Belmont, at least in my neighborhood, with great success.”
However, the installation of the speed tables or speed bumps, which the Transportation Advisory Committee recommended last year, has been delayed due to ongoing utility work.
“It makes absolutely no sense to spend money to insert a traffic calming procedure that then gets ripped up a year later,” Dionne said.
Assistant Town Engineer Wayne Chouinard said National Grid, which started utility work on the street last year, plans to wrap up soon after working through the winter.
“Our goal is to redo White Street, including the speed tables and updated curb ramps, in the 2025 construction season,” he said.
The project will also include repaving the road.
“I group White Street in more broadly with how we might think about Waverley [Square],” said Select Board member Matt Taylor. “This is a high-density area of town where a lot of people live. … I really like the proposed speed table locations.”
In the meantime, Dionne suggested the Select Board vote to accept the recommendations of the Transportation Advisory Committee, subject to minor amendments or modifications made by the committee and town engineer. Select Board member Roy Epstein agreed, saying another condition should be that either of those parties draft a statement confirming the proposal is consistent with traffic calming policies and crosswalk policies already in place in Belmont.
“As far as I can tell, we did a speed study on White Street two or three years ago, more toward the Belmont Street end,” he said. “There is no evidence of an endemic speed problem on White Street other than it exceeding the 85th percentile by like 2 mph, but technically it does exceed, so it qualified for a speed table.”
Dionne emphasized steps the town can take to improve traffic calming are limited by state and federal regulations and policies adopted by the Transportation Advisory Committee.
To that end, Taylor said he would like the board to revisit the town’s policies on crosswalks and traffic calming at a later date.
“It does take staff time to review what might be feasible … and we want to do it in an equitable way,” he said. “We don’t want it to feel like we’re responding to whoever is loudest about it, or even [responding] retroactively.”
