Use this search box to find articles that have run in our newspapers over the last several years.
Date: 10/5/2021
NORTHAMPTON – With the project still in its design phase, Northampton residents participated in the seventh public forum for the project to redesign Main Street.
To start the forum, Northampton Mayor David Narkewicz said one of the objectives of the project is to make Main Street safer.
“One of the key goals of this project is to make Main Street safer, it was identified as one of the top crash clusters in all of the Pioneer Valley which is why it is the number one ranked project on the TIP. We also want to make it safer for all modes of travel and make it better for outdoor dining and outdoor activation,” he said.
After the city decided to move forward with Alternative 3, Narkewicz said the city has been working at a block-by-block level to work on the design.
“We selected Alternative 3 back in May from the set of alternatives that had initially been created by Toole Design. We took that broader design concept and began to drill down and seek more input and work with our design team to go inch by inch and block by block to see what could be done,” he said.
Before jumping into the night’s presentation, Jason DeGray, the project manager with Toole Design, said the materials in the presentation were still a work in progress.
"The materials you see tonight are work in progress materials, they will change. We are getting deeper into design considerations and the various elements of the design are taking their own lives whether it is the subsurface utilities, drainage, the traffic signals and the civil design, there are a lot of moving parts underway,” he said.
He added that the features of Alternative 3 includes three travel lanes, separated bicycle lanes, and expanded sidewalk zones.
“We are recommending an evolution of Alternative 3 since we last spoke. This was endorsed back in May and consisted of three travel lanes, a lane in each direction plus a center lane to accommodate left turns or provide as a flex space, as well as introducing the separated bicycle lanes, maintaining angled parking and looking to expand sidewalk zones,” he said.
While many residents would like to preserve the trees on the street currently, DeGray said the health and condition of the trees may require removal for many of them.
“We understand the various desires of stakeholders in the background about the disposition of trees, but ultimately it has become clear that retaining the existing trees due to poor health or construction impacts is not going to be a viable scenario,” he said. “The approach to the future greenery of Main Street will predominantly rely on new tree stock.”
Stephanie Weyer, a landscape architect with Toole Design, said a tree assessment this year showed that about 37 percent of the trees on Main Street were in poor condition.
“We had an assessment with the tree warden this year where we are getting much more of a split and 37 percent of the trees are in poor condition. The tree warden provided notes on all the trees but one of the some of the notes we saw multiple times was poor rooting space and compaction, girdling roots, depressed canopies, trunk splitting and then damage to trunks and limbs,” she said.
By removing trees, Weyer said it would allow the design to include more optimal spacing for the trees.
“If we start removing some trees, we are able to get more in due to more optimal spacing. We are not looking at a wholesale removal of trees and we have identified the potential for preservation. Preservation is difficult particularly for larger trees because they are more likely be impacted by construction,” she said.
Weyer also discussed the difference between parallel and angled parking, which she said ends up creating about 12 feet of more space when using parallel parking for the north end of Main Street.
“With angled parking you have a 17-foot-deep space and a 14-foot travel lane. When we go to parallel, we are actually able to pool 9 feet off the parking depth and the travel lane can be a standard travel lane and you do not need a buffer, so it ends up being a 12-foot difference, essentially 8-foot parking and 11-foot travel lane,” she said.
Despite the change to angled parking on the north end of Main Street, the south end will still maintain angled parking.
Looking at the new design plan residents can see areas where the sidewalks will expand into the current sidewalk zone, and Weyer said areas could see increases to sidewalk space and outdoor dining from the previous design.
“We are essentially adding the bike lane and the buffer to the outside of the existing amenity zone. You can see the pedestrian zone and expanded outdoor dining space are starting to get outside of the line going toward the roadway. The amenity zone could be expanded up to 8 feet from 5 or 6 feet. You can see by comparison how much roadway space goes to the sidewalk,” she said.
Following the presentation, residents spent just over two hours discussing their thoughts on the plan, including continuing a debate over angled and parallel parking for the redesign and providing recommendations for the project moving forward.
The next Picture Main Street public forum takes place on Oct. 19 to focus on the western end of the project.