Streets and traffic

How much of the council's recorded discussion was about streets and traffic, and how contentious it was, year by year.

Scores of the written record, normalized by era. Minutes are the clerk's summaries, not transcripts: tone is muted and the style changed with each clerk and era, so every score is compared only with meetings of the same minute-style era (1962-1979 narrative minutes, 1980-2004, 2005-2016, 2017 on) and shown as a percentile of that era. Signals: divided and failed votes, motions that died for lack of a second, tabled or postponed items, amended motions, ordinance readings that stalled, hearings with objections, public appearances, the length of an item's discussion compared with its era, and words such as "objected", "protest", "concern", "thanked" or "commended", each kept with the sentence it came from. Only pages whose reading scores at or above the archive's score target count. The record is scored, not people: no resident is named or scored, and members appear only through their recorded votes. Meetings named as the most contentious or most congenial are published only after a person reviewed them.
2,266items on this topic
733meetings
17.5%share of discussion (era average)
90contentious items
53divided votes

A recurring struggle: contentious items in 6 decades (1970s: 4, 1980s: 14, 1990s: 1, 2000s: 11, 2010s: 51, 2020s: 9).

Items per year

YearItemsShare of the year's items ContentiousMean contentionWords
19629 31% 0.08724
196310 15% 0.07697
196413 14% 0.06879
19655 6% 0.071,020
196617 22% 0.051,020
19679 16% 0.02300
196813 11% 0.13883
196921 12% 0.101,276
197022 12%2 0.151,354
197115 19% 0.07911
197210 8% 0.09752
197310 12% 0.09499
197412 12%1 0.08616
197519 12% 0.121,418
197618 11% 0.09978
197718 12%1 0.07720
197811 6% 0.07466
19791 2% 0.2587
198016 15% 0.111,098
198148 16%5 0.185,375
198228 15%1 0.172,988
198340 12%2 0.153,137
198449 16%1 0.124,338
198517 11%1 0.131,620
198629 18% 0.101,577
198725 16% 0.071,274
198882 26%2 0.115,230
198968 30%2 0.126,668
199032 13% 0.092,226
19973 30% 0.06154
199829 12% 0.061,785
199943 10%1 0.083,705
200016 8%1 0.091,487
200129 13%2 0.132,610
200241 22%6 0.194,589
20058 12% 0.16613
20064 10% 0.11635
200713 21%1 0.181,731
200849 18%1 0.062,126
201065 28%3 0.074,762
201138 28%4 0.113,094
201234 13%1 0.144,021
201372 12%17 0.235,723
201477 19%7 0.135,191
2015104 23%6 0.105,751
2016108 13%2 0.077,211
2017100 13%5 0.105,041
2018170 23%5 0.099,194
2019174 23%1 0.078,916
2020111 20%1 0.065,284
202166 11% 0.052,507
202230 5%1 0.051,499
202338 7%3 0.122,252
202476 13%4 0.094,141
202555 9% 0.052,461
202646 9% 0.042,266

Reviewed examples

Examples appear here once meetings on this topic have been reviewed by a person.

JSON

Data last updated October 21, 2026. Built from the archive's documents; see how the data is built.