Flashing lights have boosted intersection safety

A car drives ahead after stopping at the stop sign with flashing light on Codman Road.

The recently installed flashing red lights atop the stop signs at the intersection of Codman and Lincoln Roads have cut down on the number of accidents—and most likely removed any need for making it a four-way-stop intersection.

Police Chief Kevin Kennedy said there was a spate of serious accidents, some with injuries, in the area in front of the public safety building over a period of several weeks in 2017. The crashes usually happened when cars on Codman Road didn’t stop or give the right of way to crossing traffic because drivers thought all four roads into the intersection had a stop sign, he said.

“We were all kind of, ‘What’s this all about? This is something we need to take action immediately’,” Kennedy said. He subsequently asked Chris Bibbo, superintendent of the Department of Public Works, to install brightly colored flags atop the stop signs, which seemed to be helping, but they became tattered from the elements and were not a permanent solution.

Last fall, Bibbo suggested installing the solar-powered flashers, which went into place over the winter. “They’ve been extremely effective. Since the installation of the flags and then red flashing lights, the flow of traffic through the intersection has been much safer,” Kennedy said.

There was briefly talk of seeking Complete Streets funding to install an overhead flashing red light to make it a four-way stop, but Kennedy didn’t support it because of concerns about dangerous lines of stopped cars at rush hour (morning northbound traffic on Lincoln Road backing up onto Route 117, and evening southbound traffic backing up onto the railroad tracks).

Changing the traffic pattern by adding more controls, rather than just calling attention to the existing stop signs, would also require a traffic study, input from the Roadway and Traffic Committee, and approval from the Board of Selectmen. “It’s quite a process,” Kennedy noted.

In recent years, traffic rules were changed after much discussion at the southern Winter Street/Old Winter Street intersection, at Five Corners next to the library, and at the Silver Hill Road/Weston Road intersection.