image description — The roads in pink will have their speed limits lowered to 25 mph.

Cheshire Thickly Settled Areas Approved for Speed Limit Decrease

By Sabrina DammsiBerkshires Staff
05:36PM / Monday, September 15, 2025Print Story | Email Story

CHESHIRE, Mass. — The Select Board approved lowering the speed limit on a number of streets with denser neighborhoods.

During a town meeting in 2023, voters approved giving the board the authority to lower the speed limit within thickly settled areas to 25 mph.

A "thickly settled area" is defined as where dwelling houses or businesses are situated at 200 feet or less between them for a distance of a quarter of a mile or over, Town Administrator Jennifer Morse said.

Currently the speed limits in thickly settled districts are 30 mph, set by state law, unless a municipality passes a law that allows the town to reduce the limit further. However, state law will not allow a town to let the speed limit by more than 25, board member Michelle Francesconi said.

Following a meeting between the police chief, Department of Public Works superintendent and Morse, it was recommended that the following streets speed limits be lowered to 25 mph: Church Street and East Main Street.

In addition, the speed limit will be applied to Dean, Dean extension, Depot, Fisk, Prospect, Railroad, Richardson, Richmond and School streets; Flaherty, Furnace Hill and Pit roads; Berkshire, Devonshire, Meadowview, Wilshire and Yorkshire drives; Wood Lane, and portions of Main Street, Ingalls and Wells roads.

Following the recommendation of Select Board member Raymond Killeen the board also approved including Arnold Court and Crest Road.

"Even one would improve it, but they're coming down both Crest and Arnold, just at a high rate. We got now day-care centers up there, a lot of younger kids," Killeen said.

Francesconi recommended examining whether the speed limit could be applied on Lanesborough Road to Daniels Terrace and lower West Mountain Road to the cemetery.

"All the way to the bottom of that hill where the bridge is going to get replaced — it's tight, and 30 miles an hour is pretty fast through there, especially with the cemetery and people pulling out of the cemetery," Francesconi said.

DPW Director Corey McGrath will look into whether Lanesborough Road and West Mountain Road qualify for the speed limit change.

If all the roads are included, the town will need to purchase 25 mph speed limit signs for enforcement, which cost approximately $40 each.

The town will notify the state Department of Transportation of these speed limit chances after the final review by McGrath.

Tags: speed limits,

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Adams Zoning Board Talks Signage Bylaw

By Sabrina DammsiBerkshires Staff
02:47PM / Saturday, August 29, 2026

ADAMS, Mass. — For more than a decade, the Zoning Board has deliberated over several matters involving its "restrictive" sign bylaw.

Now, the board is developing a proposed amendment that would make the bylaw less constraining for businesses while preserving the town’s character and protecting neighboring properties.

The current bylaw has been in effect since around 1986, and for the past 10 to 15 years, it has sparked controversy nearly every year when a new sign is proposed for installation in town, said board member David Rhinemiller.

When it was developed in the 1980s, the goal was to preserve the town’s 1950s and 1960s-era character, he said.

As part of the process, the town surveyed residents about their vision for the community, and the overall feedback favored maintaining that aesthetic, which was then reflected in the zoning bylaws, including restrictions on internally illuminated signs, Rhinemiller said.

The board hopes to make the baseline of the bylaw more realistic and acceptable to modern businesses while ensuring it protects the safety and comfort of the surrounding area, board members said.

"The way our current bylaws are written, virtually anything that somebody might want to do to change the sign regulations to accommodate their business is subject to meeting the requirements of a variance, which we all know is very difficult to do," board member Raymond Gargan Jr. said.

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