In spite of a rash of serious crashes that have killed and maimed dozens of victims across Worcester this year, a proposal to reduce the city's speed limits has been stuck in bureaucratic limbo in the City Council's Traffic and Parking committee since December.
Worcester drivers have killed one 13-year-old girl and put another in a coma this summer, and the city's leadership has declared a "traffic violence crisis" in the city.
Worcester City Manager Eric Batista introduced two proposals to manage reckless speeding on the city's streets at the end of 2023.
One proposal would introduce a citywide default 25 mph speed limit on most of Worcester's streets, with the exception of a few state-controlled highways.
The second proposal would let the City Council adopt a lower 20 mph speed limit in designated high-risk "safety zones," which could include streets near parks and playgrounds, schools, senior centers, and hospitals.
Both proposals seek to address one of the key risk-factors in violent crashes. A pedestrian who gets hit by a car traveling 25 mph is likely to survive, but a pedestrian hit by a car going 40 mph is overwhelmingly likely to die.
“We look forward to this coming out of committee and getting the council to pass it because it is the right thing to do," Karin Goins, a safety advocate affiliated with WalkBike Worcester, told StreetsblogMASS last week. "We’re not the first community to do this. And it needs to be done immediately in light of all the recent tragedies."
Safety first – but first, lots of meetings
The City Council referred both speed limit proposals to the City Council's Traffic and Parking Committee in December of last year.
Worcester is a relative laggard in reducing its speed limit: 66 other cities and towns across the Commonwealth have already enacted 25 mph speed limits, with little controversy.
Controlled scientific studies of Boston's speed limit reduction, which took effect in 2017, showed that the change led to major reductions in lethal speeds on city streets.
"The thing I pride myself on is that really, it’s safety first," City Councilor Donna Colorio, the chair of the Worcester City Council's Traffic and Parking committee, told StreetsblogMASS last week. "If it’s going to slow the cars down, then so be it, because we don’t want these tragedies to keep on occurring."
But safer speed limits haven't actually come first in Councilor Colorio's agendas. The speed limit reforms have been awaiting action for over 8 months in Colorio's Traffic and Parking Committee:
Colorio inititally put off a vote on the proposal last winter by asking city staff to host informational meetings on the speed limit changes in each of the city's five City Council districts.
Colorio admits that not many people were interested in those meetings: there were "probably a total of, generously, maybe 40 people," she told StreetsblogMASS.
Instead of accepting the low turnout as evidence that the proposal was not particularly controversial, Colorio asked city staff to conduct an additional online survey, which went out in June.
Colorio admitted to StreetsblogMASS that "it’s just horrific that these people are being hit" while her constituents wait for their elected officials to take action.
But she insists that extensive public outreach needs to come first.
"I’m concerned that we are constantly getting criticized because we don’t involve the public, because we’re not being transparent. I want more," Colorio said.
Meanwhile, roadway violence becomes a 'crisis'
While the City Council rides the brakes on safer speed limits, Worcester's drivers have been doing the opposite – with deadly results.
In the 8 months that speed limit reforms have been waiting in committee, drivers have caused over 2,900 crashes in Worcester, over 600 of which inflicted injuries on at least one victim, according to MassDOT's IMPACT crash database.
On June 27, a driver struck and killed 13-year-old Gianna Rose Simoncini while she was attempting to cross the 6-lane Belmont Street near UMass Memorial Medical Center.
On July 29, another driver struck Ayuen Leet, another 13-year-old girl, on the four-lane Shrewsbury Street next to Cristoforo Colombo Park.
Leet was still in a coma as of last week, according to a report from the Worcester Telegram, and police have charged the driver who hit her, 18-year-old Van Nguyen, with operating to endanger, speeding, and failure to yield to a pedestrian in the roadway.
On Sunday, August 11, another driver struck and seriously injured another victim on Greenwood Street in Quinsigamond Village. Few details are available, but Worcester police told StreetsblogMASS on Tuesday that the woman is in still in the hospital with brain injuries, but is in stable condition.
Committee could finally take action next month
The Traffic and Parking Committee of the Worcester City Council is scheduled to meet again, after taking most of the summer off, on September 18.
"I'm assuming the survey report will be ready by then," Colorio told StreetsblogMASS. "Then we'll discuss it and vote it out to the full Council – it'll be on the agenda."
Stephen Rolle, Worcester's Commissioner of Transportation and Mobility, confirmed that his department had compiled the speed limit survey data, and that the city would publish a detailed summary before the end of this month.
