Making Neighborhood Streets Safer

Contacting your neighborhood's Office of Neighborhood Services liaison is a great way to make your feedback heard as part of this process. While we aim to provide speed humps on all eligible streets where neighbors want them, some streets that are hilly or curvy will not get speed humps. Streets with more than two lanes, major roadways, and streets with MBTA bus routes will also not be eligible for speed humps.

You will receive information by mail when your neighborhood’s streets are being considered for speed humps. You will also hear from the City ahead of construction.

The City of Boston has installed speed humps on streets in Dorchester, Jamaica Plain, Roxbury, and South Boston. This map shows where speed humps have been built so far.

Drivers traveling will encounter a speed hump approximately every 150 feet to 350 feet. If they travel at appropriate speeds, they will be able to comfortably traverse the speed humps. Because speed humps are more gradual than speed bumps, cars will not “bottom out” or cause excessive noise. Speed humps do not interfere with on-street parking.

Our speed humps are designed to be relatively comfortable to traverse while riding a bike. They use a sinusoidal curve and are built into the subsurface of the street. This makes for a smoother ride up and down than you may find with speed bumps in parking lots.

Speed humps do not prevent plows from clearing our streets. Maps of streets with speed humps are shared with our team in Public Works and their contractors. In the case of a snow event, the yellow “speed hump” signs provide advance notice to the plow drivers to lift their blades slightly.

Streets eligible for speed humps are typically smaller, neighborhood streets and not streets primarily used for emergency response.  Emergency vehicles are able to maneuver speed humps placed on neighborhood streets to reach their destination effectively.

In May 2023, the City of Boston adopted a new Speed Hump Policy and Design Directive. This document builds on our earlier policies for traffic-calming and pedestrian safety. It incorporates national best practices as well as what we have learned works best for Boston.

You can also view our typical design detail for speed humps.

Every zone was analyzed using the most recent and accurate data. For crash history, we looked at crashes resulting in response from Boston EMS between January 1, 2018 and December 31, 2022. Our source for demographic data is the U.S. Census Bureau's 5-year American Community Survey, analyzed at the block group level.

To understand safety on these streets in the past five years, we looked at crashes that resulted in a call to Boston EMS. We counted how many crashes happened on the streets in each zone. Then, we divided the total number of crashes by the number of miles of eligible streets in that zone.

We know that some people are more likely to be seriously injured or killed in a car crash: younger people, our elders, and our neighbors with disabilities. We used information from the U.S. Census to approximate how many of these more vulnerable people lived in each group of streets. 

We are also working with the Office of Neighborhood Services to conduct outreach to ensure that the speed hump zones match the needs of the community.