SALEM — Good things come in threes… like the Bee Gees, the Three Stooges, or the meetings to fix right-on-red in Salem.
Two city bodies met jointly Thursday night to kick off an upcoming wave of work analyzing intersections throughout the city and studying whether they should allow or prohibit vehicles taking right-hand turns on red lights, also known as “right-on-red.” The meeting included the City Council’s ordinance committee, the Traffic and Parking Commission, and several invited city officials.
By the meeting’s end, three more dates were scheduled to review dozens of intersections, with the city divided into three parts: state-owned signals like those seen along parts of Highland or Loring avenues; city-owned lights outside downtown; and those lights inside downtown. The meetings are scheduled for Thursday evenings on Feb. 14, 28, and March 7.
Right-on-red was a movement that began around the 1970s and largely became law across the country by 1980, with Massachusetts being the final state to embrace it on Jan. 1 that year. It began as a measure to cut down on idling cars at traffic lights as a means to reduce gasoline usage, a noted effort given the fuel embargoes of the era, according to Ward 3 City Councilor Patricia “Patti” Morsillo, who has led calls for the review.
“There doesn’t seem to be any evidence though that allowing right-on-red was anything other than a feel-good measure. There is nothing to show that less gas has been used and pollution has been reduced,” she said.
“Right from the beginning, it is shown to be a problem for safety. and the reason pointed to by several studies is that some drivers stop and slow down as they do at a red light, they look to the left … and not to the right and straight ahead until it’s too late.”
That message was echoed by Traffic and Parking Commissioner Erin Turowski, who highlighted the upcoming golden jubilee for the movement as it hits 50 years old.
“It’s important to remember now that 49 years later, the vehicles we’re driving are very different than the cars that were being driven when they put this into place,” she said. “The laws written 50 years ago can no longer be applied to 2024, and we’re seeing an increase in pedestrian and bicyclist crashes because of this issue.”
Salem is a city well known for its traffic woes, as a now nearly year-round tourist attraction owed to the city’s history. Downtown effectively becomes impassible by summer, guaranteed throughout October, and efforts to slow down cars in city neighborhoods are sometimes met with as much hostility as they are praise.
“The impetus behind my putting this order in was that I walk a lot. I walk downtown. I walk through Riley Plaza,” Morsillo said. “It’s a frustration, because every single time, I wait for the walk signal, but it doesn’t matter. … Cars just keep taking the right-on-red to go up Washington Street.
“The other thing that happens is cars don’t stop until they’re sitting right over the crosswalk, because they’re queued up to take that right-on-red as soon as they can,” Morsillo continued. “It happens every time.”
Limited information is available on the number of accidents that have actually been caused by vehicles turning right-on-red. Addressing the matter at the meeting, Salem traffic division lead and police Lt. David Tucker said he’s reading through police records for the 840 crashes reported at intersections with stoplights from Oct. 1, 2017 to July 3, 2023.
“So far, I’ve focused on the downtown area,” he said. “I’ve only come up with three collisions where a vehicle made a right-on-red, two where a vehicle struck a pedestrian, and one where a bicyclist was struck. and there was one more where a vehicle rear-ended another vehicle, which one was right-on-red and the other had right of way.”
Later, Tucker was asked about one of several factors used to implement right-on-red: three crashes within 12 months.
“We haven’t had a situation where in monitoring these, we’ve disallowed it by having three in a year,” he said, with city traffic planner Dave Kucharsky committing to further review data, but that he doesn’t think that has happened before.
Still, the city’s strategy with right-on-red is a bit chaotic, as a map of the signals released by the city goes. Nine lights that prohibit right-on-red are signed and reflected in Salem’s ordinances, but another 17 are not in the ordinance despite having signs anyway (seven are controlled by the state, while 10 belong to Salem). Another 10 are in the ordinance, but don’t have signs on the road, and three aren’t in the ordinance, but are signed specifically to allow “right turn on red after stop.”
As much as the meeting focused on right-on-red, it also touched heavily on other aspects of vehicle behavior that involves confusion from signs, or from patterns or setups at intersections with uncommon arrangements. That includes the intersection where Canal, Mill, and Washington streets come together.
“That isn’t a geometric intersection, which causes a lot of confusion. That light has one of the three signs that says ‘right on red after stop,’” Ward 5 City Councilor Jeff Cohen said. “It seems that when people are confused, they just don’t go anywhere. It just kind of causes them to stop, and people beep at them.”
At one point, the meeting touched on right-on-red-induced beeping at Riley Plaza, a city park that sits outside the routinely clogged, but rarely enforced “box” intersection at Washington, New Derby, and Norman streets, and the angered honking that often serenades city flag raisings and other ceremonies at Riley.
“It makes me crazy,” Morsillo said. “I appreciate this conversation.”
Kyle Davis, a councilor-at-large, suggested using right-on-green as a manner of creating a stop-on-red.
“I don’t know if I’m imagining this, but it’s a thing in other communities, where it’s kind of like a protected green right. Maybe that can be worked into crosswalks,” he said. “I don’t know if that’s a solution that has been looked into… where it’s red, no turn is allowed; then there’s a protected green.”
Councilor-at-large Conrad Prosniewski evoked one traffic-calming method that has proven as contentious as North Street: roundabouts.
“It slows traffic down, facilitates movement, and gives pedestrians a little safer a place to pause,” he said. “I think that’s something we should look at in some of these more dangerous intersections.”
Visit bit.ly/47YziOo for more from this meeting.
Contact Dustin Luca at 978-338-2523 or DLuca@salemnews.com. Follow him at facebook.com/dustinluca or on Twitter @DustinLucaSN.