Route 9, Responsibility, Enforcement

My first Traffic and Safety meeting.

Attended my first Worcester Traffic and Safety meeting this evening.

The agenda is available here

I spoke up in regards to reports on Belmont and Shrewbsury street, namely to hold my district representative, Candy Mero-Carlson accountable to her responsibilities.

If you appreciate watching city officals try to keep a straight face while I speak, you’ll appreciate this camera angle.

The speaker after me was Rob Bilotta, and he had a lot of much nicer ways of acknowledging the need for route 9 to be addressed. He’s running for her seat in November and you should donate and volunteer. He only lost by about 150 votes last year and every single time I hear him speak I respect him a little more

Thanks to Councilor King we have an answer on what is being done currently in regards to "enforcement" and the short answer is - not a ton, they’re mostly trying to “educate” people currently.

I’m pretty sure the education is just so in the future they can bullet point what they did prior to handing out tickets.

My takeaway from this is that the Worcester Police Department knows that tickets wouldn’t stick past an appeal and more importantly, they cannot afford to get known for traffic stops again.

Which brings me to my next highlight, Councilor King also asked about what data, particularly about race, is collected in these stops, and among other things we learn that citations are “still paper and pencil” and "Inputted into our computer system by one of our senior clerks”

Answer: They do mark the block in citations for racial demographics but the traffic division isn’t collecting the data from it. Presumably, there’s no record for when it’s just a verbal warning, but I could of course be wrong.

The city’s video is available here