Concord police issued 393 traffic citations in 2025, down from 1,757 in 2022, even as pedestrian and bicycle collisions reached their highest annual total since 2019.
The numbers come from a Concord Bridge analysis of department records published Monday, Sept. 14. Total enforcement actions, which include citations, warnings and arrests, fell to 2,714 in 2025. That is roughly 40% of the 6,762 actions recorded in 2022.
The decline runs opposite to the statewide trend. Massachusetts police departments logged more than 1.2 million enforcement actions in 2025, up from under 957,000 in 2022, according to Massachusetts Department of Transportation data cited in the analysis.
Police Chief Thomas Mulcahy said rising call volume is squeezing officers' time for traffic stops. "These demands reduce the amount of discretionary patrol time, when officers typically conduct proactive traffic enforcement," Mulcahy told the Concord Bridge.
The department has no dedicated traffic unit. Capt. Brian Goldman said officers rely on crash data and resident complaints to decide where to patrol, pointing to Main Street and Thoreau Street as one high-crash corridor that draws enforcement attention.
Officers have discretion to issue a citation, a written warning or a verbal warning on any stop. The department does not use ticket quotas.
Goldman also noted a data caveat: multiple charges on a single citation are counted separately, so the enforcement totals do not map one-to-one to individual traffic stops.
Speeding enforcement actions dropped sharply, falling from 2,577 in 2022 to 920 in 2025. Civil speeding citations fell from 500 to 86 over the same period. Stop-sign enforcement held steadier, with 405 incidents in 2025 compared with 391 in 2022, though civil citations for stop-sign violations dipped from 37 to 24.
A separate Concord Bridge analysis published Aug. 4 found that Concord recorded 15 motor vehicle collisions involving pedestrians or bicyclists in 2025, the highest annual total since 2019. The 2026 pace through May was on track to match it.
Linda Nieman, a Concord resident who advocates for pedestrian and bicycle safety with Mothers Out Front, said the drop in tickets does not reflect calmer streets. She cited inconsistent signage in town as one obstacle to enforcement and said the town needs to rethink its overall safety approach.
Asked whether the department is understaffed, Mulcahy said Concord's police staffing is "generally in line with comparable communities," based on the town's benchmarking data. He added that additional staffing would generally increase capacity for proactive enforcement while maintaining emergency response.
Concord's Comprehensive Transportation Strategy, which covers pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, parking, transit and town-wide policies, restarted in September 2025. The town collected public feedback on a draft plan through May 20. No final adoption date has been announced.
