Good story, Will. A few years ago I got fed up with the dozens of trucks using Beech Streets every day, despite the fact that it is posted with "No Trucks" allowed signs. So I spent a whole day documenting every truck that came down the street (except for those making deliveries to my neighbors) with company names, what time they went by and in some cases, photos. There were about 125 trucks in just 10 hours. I reported what I found to a meeting of the Porter Square Neighbors Association and the PSNA president forwarded the information to the police department. Lo and behold, two motorcycle cops showed up one morning the next week and started ticketing the trucks. They did this off and on for a month. Word obviously got out among the truckers, because the truck traffic disappeared and mostly hasn't come back. It was a win-win: the city collected some extra revenue, the street is a lot quieter and the truck drivers avoid tickets by avoiding Beech.

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.

Greetings Beth,

I'm so glad that someone else noticed and wrote something about that. It makes you wonder what better the authorities, local police and some' have to do that takes away completely from them paying attention to suck humongous tracks riding on freely on such small neighborhoods' streets and alleys? Of course, you'd find most doing details elsewhere, places other than their own respective policing quarters, right?

It is great stuff to be engage in streets and neighborhood policing as regular citizen. Doesn't it make you feel like your tax monies literally makes a difference then? The fact that you object and do the supervision necessary to keep them honest and on their toes, just is an awesomely helpful and vital thing, and quite frankly, natural and essential thing to do for yourself and your community.

"CHOOSE LIGHT-CHOOSE LIFE-CHOOSE EQUALITY-CHOOSE ACTION-CHOOSE FAIRNESS-CHOOSE HUMANITY-CHOOSE PROGRESSIVE MEASURE"

Koré