This Boston suburb is filling its roads with obstacles — intentionally

In just a few days, Tufts Street in Somerville is going to get much harder to drive on: its wide, linear road will finish its transformation into a winding path with speed humps and artificially narrowed sections. While the changes may seem unorthodox, Somerville is purposefully filling this road with obstacles to slow down traffic and make the street safer for pedestrians. 

“[Tufts Street is] a ‘neighborway,’ one of several experiments in extreme street makeovers in Somerville as the city tries to prevent deadly crashes on its roads by intentionally making it harder to drive on them, turning side streets into comfortable routes for people who aren’t traveling by car, and cutting down on the risk posed by too many cars going too fast,” Spencer Buell writes for the Boston Globe.

The term “neighborway” describes roads where drivers move so carefully that kids can ride their bikes in the street. Somerville’s neighborways has not always gone over well with drivers, but the city has seen results from its embrace of pedestrian-friendly infrastrcuture: Somerville has not has a single traffic death in four years.