Traffic engineers, policymakers, and a few interested residents have spent months thinking about traffic patterns and impediments in the center of town with the goal of getting motor vehicles and people to co-exist in harmony — or at least in a way that doesn’t injure anyone. They are facing the same frustrations that many of us feel these days as we untangle Christmas tree lights, knowing that if each bulb isn’t seated just right, the whole string won’t work.

There are so many nodes where traffic conditions can unravel quickly in the nexus of roads at the center of town: the flagpole, Queen Street at Church Hill, Hawley School, St Rose Church, Newtown Middle School, Queen Street at Mile Hill, and Glover Avenue at Main Street are a few of the important ones. During the morning or evening commute to work and school, traffic slowdowns in any one of these spots immediately put additional pressure on all the other areas as motorists try to avoid the bottleneck.

A 29-page report has come out of this effort. It will be the subject of a public informational meeting of the Borough Board of Burgesses on Tuesday, December 19, at 7:30 pm, in the Booth Library. The report proposes some initial steps toward a comprehensive approach to the problem, including a reconfiguration of the Queen Street / Glover Avenue intersection and the Main Street / Church Hill intersection where traffic signals have been proposed at — but not on — the flagpole. Concurrently, the Police Commission and the Board of Selectmen have passed along a proposed “traffic calming” ordinance to the Legislative Council with their blessings. The ordinance would empower the Police Commission to order “speed humps” and “neck-downs” and other road design elements aimed at slowing down traffic.

At this preliminary stage, the planners and engineers have been careful to keep their eye on the big picture. But when it comes time to fund some of the report’s recommendations, to select priorities for work, and to place traffic calming devices, we expect that broad perspective to narrow to the competing priorities of specific neighborhoods, businesses, and interest groups, which will be a signal that things may be about to get worse.

Solving the traffic problem in the center of town is a daunting challenge, and it may turn out that there is no good solution, just a meager mitigation of a major annoyance. We aren’t sure how improving traffic flow is reconciled with “humps” and “neck-downs,” but we will be watching carefully to see how this complex string of lights gets untangled. You can, too, by attending the December 19 meeting at the library.