"The State's report is a valuable tool to help cities and towns like Chelsea better address traffic safety in our communities.

Utilizing emerging technologies to assemble data and report trends is something we all need to do more of, although many cities and towns would be hard pressed to find the funding and acquire the technology and data to perform such on their own.

The State, therefore, can be an important partner in undertaking such studies on the global perspective, and then calling attention to specific problem areas on the local level.

This report is a good first step to us examining potential problem spots for motorists, bicyclists and pedestrians. The next step for us would be to work with the State to further understand the numbers and examine each an every incident the report captured to see if there are any trends that should be addressed.

Over the past several years, several initiatives have been taken on the local level to address traffic safety, including the expansion of our Police Department Traffic Unit.

We need to look at the five year period the report covers, see if we can update the information for the last two years, and overlap that with our focused traffic enforcement strategy to see if we have already reduced or maybe even solved the problem.

Chelsea is among the most densely populated communities in the state, with a low ratio of auto ownership, a very walkable downtown and plenty of cut through traffic.

These factors may contribute to the high number of accidents, and, thus, need to be further examined. In particular, our downtown is full of people walking to stores and around their neighborhoods.

It is also possible that the layout of streets and the informal crossing patterns that so many pedestrians use are contributing factors as well. Certainly, motor vehicle operator habits also need to be reviewed. This report raises the issue. Now, we hope to look further into the data and all the possible factors to find the answers."

Jay Ash
City Manager, Chelsea