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Date: 12/7/2022
WEST SPRINGFIELD – There was a week in October when drivers couldn’t get from Fausey Drive to Circle Drive. A month later, Mayor William Reichelt said town officials are still studying whether to sever the connection permanently.
Reichelt ordered the intersection closed for a traffic study starting on Oct. 20, and it was reopened after Oct. 28. Parents who use the residential neighborhood of Circle Drive as a cut-through from Morgan Road to Fausey School and West Springfield Middle School had to find alternative routes for a week, using Piper Road or Pease Avenue to connect to the Amostown Road end of Fausey Drive.
“The closure was conducted as part of a larger study to reconstruct the Fausey Drive and redesign the student drop-off areas at Fausey,” said Reichelt. “It’s an idea that’s been talked about for a few years now as we’ve worked on replacing the water main on Circle Drive before paving the road. The traffic data will include vehicle counts and turning movements. In conjunction with this study, we wanted to also take a look at what the impact of closing Circle Drive would have on traffic overall in the area.”
Reichelt said at the time that closing the connection between the two streets would limit Circle Drive to neighborhood traffic only, prompting parents on pickup or drop-off runs instead to use Amostown Road, which is designed for a heavier volume of traffic.
In 2020, a group consisting of the mayor, schools, police, fire and public works officials began discussing how students are dropped off and picked up by both cars and buses at Fausey. By June 2020, the Department of Public Works had developed three conceptual plans of how circulation and parking patterns could change to improve the flow of traffic.
At the same time, the town had Circle Drive on its list of roads to be repaved. First, the neighborhood needed a replacement for a water main that had broken 11 times, and roadway drainage improvements in some spots. The town also wanted to improve drinking and fire suppression water supply to schools by connecting the high school and middle school. Public Works Director Robert Colson said, “An incidental benefit to connecting the schools is that we would be providing a feasible location for houses at the end of Lyncosky Drive to connect to our public water system and abandon their private wells.”
Colson went on to say, “We had already performed cleaning and camera inspection of the Circle Drive sanitary and storm sewer pipes back in 2013, so we had good data on those assets. Last, on Nov. 14, 2022, Eversource Gas of Massachusetts informed us that they would be replacing the gas main on Circle Drive in 2023, so we are now working to integrate the gas project with our water, drainage and paving project.”
After the town officials reviewed the Fausey concept plans, they decided to contract with one of their on-call design engineering firms to produce plans for both Fausey improvements and the Circle Drive work. By mid-2022 it was decided to enlarge the design effort to take into account the road network surrounding Fausey School by performing a traffic study. This included measuring traffic flow with the connection between Circle and Fausey Drive closed.
“We want the most quantitative data to help design the best possible outcome for the area,” Colson said. “We expect to have the traffic study results back by mid-December 2022 and a public information meeting will be scheduled to go over all the data and current Fausey site concept level plans.”
The traffic study is still in the conceptual stages. No decision will be made until the data is returned from the designer.
“This is a big project,” Colson said. “The proposed work in the Circle and Fausey Drive area is estimated to cost in the range of $4 million. The traffic study is just one part of the overall larger project whose paving improvements are meant to have a 50-year life span. … We want to make sure we look at everything we can and that we’re on the right path. It’s an exciting project and the mayor has been great as usual getting the Department of Public Works, school, Police and Fire departments together to get the best possible outcome for the town.”