MARBLEHEAD — In 2020, the Highway Department installed two sets of seasonal speed bumps on each side of the hill on Peach Highlands in an attempt to stop hill jumping on the road. After being removed for the winter, the bumps were put back on Tuesday morning.
Just a few hours later, however, a nearby resident decided to take it upon himself to remove them, which he hopes is for good this time.
Tom Peach owns First Harbor Company, a small construction business, with his wife, Samantha. The business is on Beringer Way, directly off of Peach Highlands. He said that the nature and location of his work forces him to go over the bumps multiple times a day, putting wear and tear on his vehicles.
Peach claimed that when the bumps were put in four years ago, residents in the area were not given a say in their installation. He said that he went to the Select Board repeatedly to see if they could be permanently removed.
He was told that he needed to bring forth a letter signed by multiple residents in the area who also had complaints about the speed bumps. However, Peach said he did not have the time to go through a drawn-out process. When he saw the speed bumps getting drilled in Tuesday morning, he decided that enough was enough.
“I feel it’s unfair that these were just installed without say by any of the neighborhood or the abutters,” Peach said. “One or several people were able to approach the selectmen and basically make this decision without any other input from anyone else in the neighborhood.”
Other business owners in the area said they also have to move large vehicles and machinery over the bumps multiple times a day.
Marblehead Movers owner Liam McGeown said that he has six trucks that are constantly going across the speed bumps. He said that there are often valuable or delicate items being moved in the trucks, which can potentially get damaged.
McGeown acknowledged that speed bumps are important and can effectively be used to slow down traffic. However, he doesn’t believe that they are always the answer.
“I think they’re safe, it slows people down, but you’re going over these maybe six, seven times a day,” McGeown said. “You have to slow way, way, way down in a moving truck and you run the risk of things being damaged because you’re hitting (the speed bumps) both ways.”
While the addition of the speed bumps has resulted in less hill jumping in the area, Peach and other residents said they appear to have created another issue.
The bumps do not go the width of the road, allowing for vehicles on both sides of the hill to avoid them by straddling the double yellow line or going around the edge with two wheels on the bumps.
But he said his biggest problem is that people in the area never had a choice in their installation.
“There’s no voice, no vote,” Peach said. “We weren’t notified as abutters. We’re the people affected the most.”
While Peach conducted what he called “an act of civil disobedience,” he said he understands the need for some form of traffic control on the street. He hopes that residents of the neighborhood and town officials can come together to develop a different strategy.
“I feel there are better ways to potentially enforce it, whether it’s a traffic camera, things that are more low-impact on everyone,” Peach said. “Let’s only punish the people who commit a crime, as opposed to punishing all the people who have to drive over it every single day who live in this neighborhood.”
“I think it’s unnecessary and unrealistic to put speed bumps on every single street to make them safe,” McGeown added. “Instead, put speed limits and enforce them through community and police.”
