Somerville’s Community Path is getting strips of small speed bumps glued down to try to slow down users on wheeled vehicles, and pavement markings, traffic-calming measures at path crossings and sign changes are on the way this fall, transportation officials said Monday.
Among the signs due to be replaced, the ones “that say ’bike route’ are very unhelpful in reminding all of us that pedestrians come first,” said city director of mobility Brad Rawson to city councilors in a Traffic and Parking Committee meeting. “We all know that this is the Community Path, not the bike path.”
The Community Path Extension opened in 2023, completing a 3.2-mile off-street multiuse trail running from the Alewife Linear Park in North Cambridge to East Cambridge by the Lechmere MBTA station. More than 3,300 people use it daily, according to estimates from 2024, but it draws everyone from dog-walkers and “kiddos on strider bikes” to people on gas-powered scooters and e-motos, or electric motorcycles “obviously not intended for use on the community path,” Rawson said.
The culture of use needs to change, chair Naima Sait said, and “enforcement helps as well” as signs. After a meeting with the Somerville Alliance for Safe Streets on Saturday at which members called for more enforcement citywide, Sait said she expected to address the topic in a November meeting.
A 1,200-person survey about how safe people feel on the path showed 64 percent of users in the fall of 2025 were somewhat concerned. Nineteen percent were very concerned.
“We all observe it in our day to day – the path has so much traffic, it is so well loved by so many diverse users, that often one of the biggest pain points and challenges is faster-moving users [sharing] that space with slower-moving users,” Rawson said. Slowing down e-bikes and other wheeled vehicles was a concern for community leaders around North America, including in Boston, and they “are all working on design strategies.”
The text-heavy signs inherited from the MBTA in Somerville don’t help, Rawson said, and will be swapped out this fall; engineering, mobility and parking staff were out a few nights ago finding places to try low-cost pavement treatments that the city intends to scale up along the path over the next few weeks. Users can expect to see markings that say “Look” and “Slow,” and plastic bollards separating lanes of traffic – work done by crews that should disrupt path use for only short periods, and that will usually be done overnight.
Speed boards and counters are among additions expected next year; 2028 could see more speed humps and cameras at intersections, according to a presentation shared with councilors.
All are to remind users, “particularly the faster-moving people on bikes and scooters, that the onus is on them to yield to slower-moving people,” Rawson said.
Councilor Ben Wheeler said he’d spotted some of the first thermoplastic strips on a section of the path near Central Street and appreciated the city taking action, “not waiting for the perfect, but trying some of these things on a small scale.”
Wheeler recalled thinking, “I can’t believe they’re already trying these out after just just releasing this report. It was exciting to see.”
