To the editor:

The proposal to charge neighborhoods for their traffic-calming devices such as roundabouts sounds on the face of it to be a reasonable one but acts as a Trojan horse for those who wish to eliminate them altogether.

To begin with, less prosperous parts of town would be unable to afford the hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund the improvements, and the greater proportion of rental units in those areas would further doom them, as the landlords would band together in opposition.

Further, these devices are needed to protect the residents of one area from through traffic coming from elsewhere. Of course the drivers won’t see the benefit of improvements that force them to drive at safer speeds, but they are the ones causing the need for those changes.

Then again, if I were to have a say in the work done on the street in front of my house, I’d call for it to stop altogether; I prefer it to deteriorate into a one-lane muddy track, especially if it would lower my taxes.

Bob Gent,

Lawrence