When Select Board members hear from constituents, their messages frequently concern speeding on Harvard’s scenic roads, urging the board to lower speed limits and enforce them.
Articles 10 and 11 offer solutions, though neither provides immediate relief. Passage of Article 10 would authorize the Select Board to set a speed limit of 25 mph in certain districts by accepting the provisions of a state law created for that purpose. Article 11 authorizes the board to petition the Legislature for the power to set precise limits on 33 of Harvard’s roads.
Article 10 offers the quickest path to lowering speeds in town, though not as quickly as one would hope. Once the Select Board knows it has the backing of Town Meeting, it can immediately vote to accept Chapter 90 Section 17C of Massachusetts law and declare a speed limit of 25 mph in areas that have been confirmed to be either thickly settled or within a business district. The board must notify the Department of Transportation of its action, but can then post signs on town roadways where they enter Harvard to warn motorists of the new limit. The new signs would state that the speed limit throughout town is 25 mph “unless otherwise posted.”
But the posting of 25 mph signs at town borders could be as far as the town is able to go. Town officials have yet to determine whether any area in Harvard qualifies as “thickly settled” or a business district. The state defines a “thickly settled” area as one in which houses are separated on average by less than 200 feet over a distance of a quarter of a mile or more, an arrangement more likely to be found in a city block than a rural community. A business district is an area “built up with structures devoted to business”—Main Street in Ayer, for example.
Select Board member Erin McBee, who with colleague Kara Minar urged the inclusion of Article 10 on this weekend’s warrant, told the Press that the town currently lacks the GIS software it needs to prove that homes in the village of Still River or clusters of businesses on Ayer Road meet the state’s criteria. Moreover, the new restrictions wouldn’t apply to roads under the jurisdiction of the state Department of Transportation, including Massachusetts Avenue and the portion of Littleton Road between Route 2 and the Littleton town line. As for roads on which speed limits have already been posted, such as Ayer, Littleton, Old Littleton, Bolton, and Still River roads, those limits would remain in place until they can be shown to meet state criteria.
Nevertheless, says McBee, new signs at town borders would at least set the right tone for drivers entering town. Encountering a 25 mph limit “unless otherwise posted” would, she hoped, encourage drivers to slow down as they entered Harvard and to think twice before putting feet to the metal.
Article 11: ‘Worth a shot’
Article 11 offers a radical and perhaps unlikely path to lowering speed limits throughout town. Using the home-rule provision of the state constitution, the article asks Town Meeting to authorize the Select Board to petition the Legislature for the right to set maximum speeds on 33 roads across the approximately 70 miles of roads over which the town has jurisdiction (The full list is available in the warrant, available online at https://bit.ly/3Dz9TvK, as well as in the hardcopy warrant that will be handed to Town Meeting attendees when they register.) Passage of the home-rule petition by the state house and senate would grant Harvard’s Select Board the power to post the new limits.
Acting Police Chief James Babu and DPW Director Tim Kilhart say a home-rule petition is a longshot, but they give the Select Board credit for trying. Most of Harvard’s roads are not presently posted and their default speed limit, per state law, is 40 mph. Changing a speed limit requires a state-sanctioned speed study of the road in question, an expensive, lengthy, and uncertain process, say Babu and Kilhart. A speed study of Still River Road could take as long as three years, said Kilhart, and could find that the proper limit, which the state bases on the 85th percentile of the speeds recorded in a study, is higher than the currently posted speed.
Should the Legislature approve Harvard’s request, Kilhart says that posting new speed limits for the 33 roads listed in the warrant article would require the purchase of 120 signs at a cost of approximately $15,000, plus the cost of labor needed to install them. Babu says the new limits would not, however, be a burden to the Police Department. Posted speeds make it easier for police to determine whether a driver is speeding and to issue citations that will stand up in court.
“It’s worth a shot,” says Babu. As Harvard’s population grows and traffic increases, he said, the town must find the means to adjust.
