Thomas Breen photo
Building out four new speed tables on Sargent Dr.
Sargent Drive speeders will have a bit bumpier of a time flooring it across Long Wharf, thanks to four new city-built speed tables designed to deter drag racing.
Mayor Justin Elicker, City Engineer Giovanni Zinn, Police Chief Karl Jacobson, Fire Chief John Alston, and a handful of fellow top police officers and firefighters heralded those newly installed traffic-calming measures during a Wednesday afternoon press conference by the Mobil gas station at Sargent Drive and Food Terminal Plaza.
City Engineer Zinn at Wednesday's presser.
Oftentimes barely audible against a backdrop of gusty wind and highway-roaring cars and trucks, the top city officials described how a city-contracted construction crew spent the day installing four new speed tables along Sargent from Ikea to the nature preserve closer to City Point.
These four new stretches of elevated asphalt — which are “longer and easier for large vehicles to navigate” than speed bumps, Zinn said — come nearly three years after the city installed speed humps up and down the parallel Long Wharf Drive just on the other side of the highway in August 2020. Since those speed humps went in, Elicker said, “we have not seen” any drag racing on that previously speeding-car-prone stretch of Long Wharf. He said the city is hoping to see the same effect on Sargent.
The four new speed tables also come roughly seven months after a 30-year-old New Bedford, Mass. man named Carlos Gonzalez died and a half-dozen people were injured in an apparent drag racing crash on Sargent last October.
Chief Jacobson.
Jacobson said that these new speed tables mean that local speeders have one less place to race in town. It also means one less place that city cops have to concentrate speed-detail resources when looking to crack down on dangerous and illegal roadway behavior.
Elicker said other popular speeding spots like Ella T. Grasso Boulevard and Rt. 80 are trickier to act on quickly because they’re state roads. He said the city’s hopeful that the delineators now up on a long-dangerous stretch of the Boulevard will help slow cars in the Hill. He said the city is also working with the state to put in place a series of more substantive traffic-calming improvements on Rt. 80, including changing the configuration of the road itself, to slow cars there.
Jacobson added that police have begun and are about to start deploying a host of new technology — including Star Chase GPS trackers and drones — to keep track of drag racers and make arrests after the fact without having to engage in roadway pursuits.
Jose and Isabel Corona.
Jose and Isabel Corona stood at the back of the presser, watching the elected officials tout the car-slowing capabilities of these newest speed tables — and hoped that the promises come true.
The husband-wife duo run a Mexican food truck at the city’s Food Truck Paradise on Long Wharf on the other side of the highway. Jose said cars have slowed down significantly on Long Wharf Drive ever since the city put in speed humps over there. He also said he sees drag racers and high speeders on Sargent “all the time.” Hopefully these new improvements on this side of the highway, he said, are as effective as the ones that have already gone in on Long Wharf Drive.
I really hope the City is serious about dealing with Route 80. I'm not all that close to it but can hear the racing. Lately the racing has involved shootings and driving into pedestrians.
The road is jammed solid with cars (racers and spectators) and emergency vehicles can't get through. It's affecting all businesses there and if the City doesn't act there will vacant stores where Walmart and Lowes are now.