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Date: 3/5/2015
LONGMEADOW – The Select Board at its Feb. 17 meeting voted to implement temporary traffic signage off of Quinnehtuk Road as well as to adopt a town-wide traffic calming policy.
The temporary signage is now in place and states that right-hand turns off of Frank Smith Road are prohibited Monday through Friday from 7 to 9 a.m. and 4 to 6 p.m.
Roughly 1,800 vehicles travel through Quinnehtuk Road per day, according to town data. The road is often used as a bypass for motorists between Frank Smith Road and Wolf Swamp Road. The road should see about 400 vehicles per day.
Selectman Mark Gold, who served as interim chair during Richard Foster’s absence, said, “I think that one of the things that concerns me is that we have yet to [have been] able to address any concerns that the residents of Quinnehtuk Road brought to our attention a couple months ago.”
Gold said the traffic calming policy, which had been approved prior to the board’s discussion about signage on Quinnehtuk Road, “still doesn’t do anything for Quinnehtuk.”
“First of all this is not an agenda item,” Town Manager Stephen Crane said. “And if I heard discomfort with [voting on a] K-9 unit [grant] without the full board, I can’t believe you want to make a decision that was far more epic for the board without the full board here, especially when we just adopted and we’re not even going to give it a full chance to work.”
Ultimately, the board voted 2 to 0 with one abstention to approve the signage. Grant and Selectman Alex Grant voted in favor and Selectman Marie Angelides abstained. Foster and Selectman Paul Santaniello were not present for the vote.
Angelides said she abstained because she believed the vote was illegal.
A public body can consider a topic that was not listed in the meeting notice if “the chair did not reasonably anticipate [the topic] 48 hours before the meeting,” according to information regarding open meeting law on the Attorney General’s website.
“Although a public body may consider a topic that was not listed in the meeting notice if unanticipated, the Attorney General strongly encourages public bodies to postpone discussion and action on topics that are controversial or may be of particular interest to the public if those topics were not listed in the meeting notice,” it reads.
Gold said prior to the vote that signage would immediately address the issue.
“It would give the residents a sense that we’re trying to do something and let us take an action that would move forward and again, I thought we had asked the town manager to get something done. It hasn’t gotten done. I think we failed them,” he added.
The board had decided to create the traffic calming policy at its Dec. 1, 2014 meeting “after the chaotic discussion about Quinnehtuk,” Crane said.
“You can’t put signs up now anyway,” he added. “There’s three feet of snow out there. How are you going to drive a channel bar into the dirt? I think there’s the physical limitations of installing signage, but the board did have a discussion about this and I thought the consensus on this last week was we were going to do the traffic study and run the analysis of Quinnehtuk … I wouldn’t say nothing has happened. The traffic calming policy is the thing that happened.”
Department of Public Works Director Michael Wrabel also emphasized that the temporary signage was not practical due to the ground being frozen.
“You could take a barrel, fill it with concrete or something, and use it as a base,” he added. “Now you’re putting something at the edge of the road that’s not normally there that could be hit by a car and that’s the only way that I can think that you’re going to put a temporary sign up.
“You should have the temporary sign and before that you should have a new warning sign up ahead,” he continued.
The town-wide traffic calming policy states that “if a resident feels that there is a speeding or traffic problem, he or she should report it on a Traffic Calming Request Form,” which is attached to the policy on the town’s website. The form should be directed to Crane or Wrabel.
Stage one traffic calming measures include low cost and easily deployable options such as the use of speed monitoring radar, the policy states.
“If one or more of the stage one traffic calming measures are implemented, the town shall collect additional traffic data to determine the effectiveness of the implemented measure,” it reads.
Stage two measures include bulb-outs, curb extensions, center island medians, landscape treatments, roundabouts, raised crosswalks, and speed humps. These measures involve physical modifications to the roadway in order to control traffic and could be expensive and require extensive construction.