Karen, thanks for the response. I hope people in my neighborhood will join the cause of logging illegal truck activity. I have logged violations on the truck reporting hotline, and have had discussions with people in the traffic department. I have brought this issue up at a few city council meetings. I have sent out e-mails on various occasions over the past ten years. I did get a few responses from some helpful people. Wayne Amaral has done a great thing by adding more signs to notify trucks of the trucking ban. Unfortunately this has had only minimal impact. The police had ticketed a few times after I made calls to their department, but it did not help at all. After this issue was brought up at East Cambridge Planning Meetings, Brad Gerratt was able to temporarily reduce Shaw's trucks from rumbling through during overnight hours. All of these things were helpful at some level, but my experience points to a larger reality. We need more traffic calming measures in East Cambridge. Our residential streets need to be something truck drivers want to avoid, not use because it makes a convenient shortcut. Many neighborhoods in the greater Boston area have moved on to sensible one way/do not enter placements, extended curbing, raised crosswalks, and easy to read signage. East Cambridge desperately needs something similar. The mass exodus of people from Kendall Square at rush hour feel free to use our residential streets as shortcuts. This is because our blocks are styled as grids without these one way/do not enter designs. Combine this with the truck drivers who see Gore Street as a bypass of McGrath O'Brien, and you have a recipe for a bad quality of life. The city has not collectively addressed this. It reflects in the infrastructure in this part of East Cambridge. It is strange that while we have a large mall, high density, close proximity to route 93, McGrath O'Brien, Memorial Drive, industrial trucking depots, Kendall Sq., Twin City, Northpoint, and downtown Boston, we received the least amount of traffic calming projects. East Cambridge residents are surrounded by very high density commercial/industrial zones that continue to be developed. I hope the people of 02141 will contact city management and community development. We need to take control of our streets. There is no excuse for sitting idle as our living quality erodes. It would be helpful if other people start logging trucking bans. Since I am rarely home during the daytime, I am currently putting in a home security camera system that will hopefully capture license plates for logging these violations. If anyone else can help, then please contact me. If we work together we can fix this problem and improve our quality of life.
Karen, thanks for the response. I hope people in my neighborhood will join the cause of logging illegal truck activity. I have logged violations on the truck reporting hotline, and have had discussions with people in the traffic department. I have brought this issue up at a few city council meetings. I have sent out e-mails on various occasions over the past ten years. I did get a few responses from some helpful people. Wayne Amaral has done a great thing by adding more signs to notify trucks of the trucking ban. Unfortunately this has had only minimal impact. The police had ticketed a few times after I made calls to their department, but it did not help at all. After this issue was brought up at East Cambridge Planning Meetings, Brad Gerratt was able to temporarily reduce Shaw's trucks from rumbling through during overnight hours. All of these things were helpful at some level, but my experience points to a larger reality. We need more traffic calming measures in East Cambridge. Our residential streets need to be something truck drivers want to avoid, not use because it makes a convenient shortcut. Many neighborhoods in the greater Boston area have moved on to sensible one way/do not enter placements, extended curbing, raised crosswalks, and easy to read signage. East Cambridge desperately needs something similar. The mass exodus of people from Kendall Square at rush hour feel free to use our residential streets as shortcuts. This is because our blocks are styled as grids without these one way/do not enter designs. Combine this with the truck drivers who see Gore Street as a bypass of McGrath O'Brien, and you have a recipe for a bad quality of life. The city has not collectively addressed this. It reflects in the infrastructure in this part of East Cambridge. It is strange that while we have a large mall, high density, close proximity to route 93, McGrath O'Brien, Memorial Drive, industrial trucking depots, Kendall Sq., Twin City, Northpoint, and downtown Boston, we received the least amount of traffic calming projects. East Cambridge residents are surrounded by very high density commercial/industrial zones that continue to be developed. I hope the people of 02141 will contact city management and community development. We need to take control of our streets. There is no excuse for sitting idle as our living quality erodes. It would be helpful if other people start logging trucking bans. Since I am rarely home during the daytime, I am currently putting in a home security camera system that will hopefully capture license plates for logging these violations. If anyone else can help, then please contact me. If we work together we can fix this problem and improve our quality of life.