Wu's Speed Hump Surge Has Stalled, and Boston Should Say Why

Boston promised as many as 500 speed humps a year when Mayor Michelle Wu launched her "safety surge" in 2023, and the city told residents it would stop making them petition for traffic calming and instead work through every eligible side street. That promise is no longer being kept, and the administration will not explain why.

Streetsblog Massachusetts reported that installations slowed sharply in early 2025 alongside Wu's review of the transportation department, that the citywide map of planned humps was taken down from Boston.gov during 2025, and that roughly a dozen new humps on Allandale Street were removed in February 2025 at the direction of the mayor's office. The city's principal transportation engineer, Dan Merrow, objected in a January 29, 2025 email, writing that the plan did not meet "the safety goals laid out by our department."

The accountability problem is as serious as the pavement. At an April 22, 2026 City Council hearing, officials said a spring round of installations was coming; months later, City Councilor Ben Weber said the city has yet to define a process or metrics for judging street safety requests. Interim Chief of Streets Chris Osgood could not say how many humps were built in 2026 or where.

A program that started with hundreds of installations in Fenway, Dorchester, South Boston and Jamaica Plain now amounts, in Weber's district, to five streets of about one mile — roughly one-tenth of 1% of Boston's streets. If the policy has changed, the city should say so plainly and publish the replacement.

This story was first reported by Streetsblog Massachusetts.