Baltimore Police have stepped up traffic law enforcement in and around Bolton Hill in recent months, a comprehensive search of online data suggests. It comes after years of protests by residents concerning high speed traffic and disregard for stop signs on, among other places, West Lafayette Avenue.
Don Feuerstein, a member of BHCA’s Safety Committee, has ferreted out evidence of more than 800 traffic stops in the neighborhood over ten months of 2026, including 179 on a three-block stretch of West Lafayette as of Oct. 31. Significant traffic stops in Bolton Hill were also reported on McMechan Street, Mt. Royal Avenue and North Avenue.
Most of those stops took place during daylight hours. The data from the city’s 911 Communications Center is incomplete; it does not say why the intervention occurred or whether a ticket was issued for speeding or some other infraction. And comparable data is not easily available for previous years.
“I have been unable to find any relevant data, other than the time/location of traffic stops without further identification in the 911 database. The crime-report database does not include moving traffic violations. The newly discovered parking/moving violations database only includes moving violations ticketed by camera, not those ticketed by police persons. They are in the Maryland District Court database but are accessible only individually by ticket number.
“It’s incomplete, but it’s encouraging,” said James Prost, who chairs the committee. He said BHCA will seek a meeting with Baltimore Police traffic officials, city transportation department representatives and BHCA leadership to renew discussions of traffic calming on Lafayette. Prost attends monthly community meetings with BPD’s western district leadership.
Eastbound traffic on Lafayette between Eutaw Place and Mt. Royal Avenue, including large trucks, escalated when the city installed bike lanes and narrowed northbound traffic on Mt. Royal, leading to daily backups. Several years ago, more than 200 residents of the Lafayette corridor petitioned the city to take steps to moderate speeding drivers.
Dolph Druckman, a Lafayette Avenue resident for 33 years, sent a warm letter of appreciation to BPD’s western district leadership. “I cannot recall a time when officers were observed monitoring intersections for speeding and rolling through stop signs and stopping drivers. All of my neighbors warmly welcome this effort,” he wrote.
“We applaud the BPD for directing resources toward the behavior of dangerous drivers. Enforcement on Lafayette identifies speeders and stop-sign violators whose unsafe driving habits extend throughout the city. This is an important distinction: effective enforcement addresses dangerous behavior wherever it occurs, while street modifications alone may simply displace the problem into other neighborhoods (as we have directly experienced),” he wrote.
