City Residents Are Fighting Traffic

Dozens of Cambridge residents living on Columbia St. near Central Square decided last weekend to do battle with City Hall, and for the moment they seem to be winning.

The Cambridge City Council yesterday ordered the "immediate installation of a traffic control system" on Columbia St., a largely black and Puerto Rican neighborhood, after three days of militant protest.

There are virtually no traffic lights or street signs along the crowded two-lane thoroughfare, a "truck route" connecting Mass Ave. and North Cambridge, which has seen two pedestriansdeaths in the last year.

Last Thursday evening, a seven-year-old boy was hit by a truck and hospitalized. Residents blocked the street off with wooden barricades throughout the weekend, forcing police to reroute traffic.

Four carloads of police dismantled the barricades early yesterday morning. Mayor Alfred E. Vellucci visited the area shortly afterward, and workmen began installing the street's first "Children-Drive Slow" signs by noon.

Late Saturday, four plainclothesmen seized one man. Alvaro Moralez, near the barricade, charging him with assault on a policeman and possession of a deadly weapon. Moralez yesterday denied the charges, saying that the unmarked police car had rushed at him and that he had thrown a brick in self-defense.

Hospitalized briefly for injuries suffered during the incident, Moralez faces a possible five-year prison term when the trial continues in two weeks' time.