


Newton Schools to Parents: No more at-door drop-off
Talk about your paradigm shifts, Newton Public Schools Superintendent David Fleischmann has announced, in a letter to elementary school parents, that it will be system-wide policy to no longer allow parents to accompany children into school at drop-off*. Details to come**, but this is huge.
Newton puts T riders in the street
What kind of city makes its transit commuters walk in the street?
Official word on Needham St./Highland Ave. delay
Note: This post was moved up so it would not be lost behind our April Fools Day posts. It’s not the bike lanes, it’s the acquisitions. Seeking to eliminate confusion about the status of the Needham St./Highland Ave. reconstruction project, David Anderson...
Newton’s Speed Limits
To understand better the impact the upcoming* change to Newton’s statutory speed limit from 30 MPH to 25 MPH, I created a map with all of the regulatory speed limits in the city. To review, the statutory speed limit is the speed limit that applies if there is no regulatory speed limit set. Any Newton street with a colored line on the map has a regulatory speed limit (according to the information I have**).

Newton house of the week
This undoubtedly raises some larger point about land costs, affordable housing, density … but this just tickled my inner 10-year-old boy. Just off Centre Street, near the Pike. Click to see a larger version.
Tom Mountain: somebody’s going to die
Somebody is going to die. As a direct consequence of Newton’s decision to become a sanctuary(-lite) city, a brown person is going to kill a Newton resident. That’s the conclusion of Chair of the Newton Republican Committee, Tom Mountain, in a column posted...What’s the priority in Newton Centre?
I’ve only lived in Newton Centre for sixteen years now, and it just dawned on me that both Centre and Beacon St. get wider in Newton Centre, adding an additional lane (Beacon between Langley and Centre only during the PM rush). As the use is most...
Teen cyclist hit by SUV driver on Watertown Street
Newton Patch and WHDH-Boston are reporting that an SUV driver hit a teen cyclist at 425 Watertown Street last night at about 4:30 PM. The teen was taken to a local hospital with serious injuries. A witness describes the teen as bleeding from the head.According to the WHDH report, the driver was turning into the driveway at 425 Watertown Street. Contact was at the right rear of the car, suggesting that the driver and cyclist were both traveling southwest and the driver turned in front of the cyclist while making a right turn.

Why lower the speed limit in Newton?
Over on the comments to this post, there’s a discussion about the merits of lowering the speed limit to 25 MPH in Newton when drivers are comfortable — on nearly all roads — going significantly faster. It’s a fair question. One answer is easy:...