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Date: 11/28/2022
SOUTHAMPTON – Now that the renovation of the East Street bridge is complete town officials are looking to modernize the street itself, a substantial project first discussed in 2003. The difficulty now, after so much time, is a jump in the price tag.
“Because of cost escalations and other issues, it’s going to take a lot more effort to meet [Department of Transportation] standards than it would have, say, two years ago, when this was last before them. We’ve had to take a look at adjusting our project scope,” said Amanda Bazinet, project manager for design firm Vanasse Hangen Brustlin (VHB).
Bazinet discussed with the Select Board the necessity now of phasing the work to fall within price points the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) will likely fund. Bazinet said her team is shooting for a budget of $10 million to $11 million. It is again early in the MassDOT approval process, “which has many many steps,” and the town and VHB will again have to work toward achieving the first major milestone, completion of 10 percent of the design-related tasks.
Bazinet said that in previous public meetings residents had concerns the bridge wasn’t part of the project. In previous efforts the scope of the work extended further and included more, and initially the bridge and roadway phases were combined. A combination of all the phases, according to Basinet, would now cost $25 million, which would create a stumbling block for funding.
A primary driver behind the cost increases are design requirements established by MassDOT for municipal projects over the last two decades. The town’s design consultant didn’t get specific about budget impacts of each directive, but listed five MassDOT guideline publications on project development and design, healthy transportation, separated bike lane planning and design, the controlling criteria and design justification process, and a GreenDOT policy directive that complicate and increase the cost of roadway projects.
Design justification refers to applications that do not meet current MassDOT requirements. The East Street project calls for design justification, which adds expense, because the scope of work being developed by VHB for this phase does not include sidewalks on both sides of the street. On the south side of the roadway a 10-foot wide multi-use path, about twice the width of a sidewalk, is planned for the mixed use of pedestrians and cyclists.
This phase of the larger East Street project will feature the mixed use path, planned to run from Whispering Meadows Lane to the end at the intersection with Strong Street. On the other end of the bridge sidewalks are planned in the historic district, on the north side of the street, 5 feet wide, a continuation of the new sidewalks recently completed on the bridge itself, with a 2-foot buffer strip of grass.
“I believe we were looking at crossing the street,” Bazinet said, near “the conservation area where a bike path is going in, and we look to make that crossing there because there’s a logical destination on that side of the street.”
Connecting with the bike trail will direct cyclists to a safer route, off the roadway. The decision to end the bike path at Whispering Meadows Lane was suggested by the accessibility of the town soccer and baseball fields from the traffic circle at the western end of the lane.
The roadway itself will become more spacious. The current roadway has no shoulders. This project will maintain the 11- to 12-foot travel lanes, but add the grassy buffers and shoulders to both sides.
“This … requires some minor widening,” Bazinet said. “It’s a much wider cross section than previously.”
Information about funding Bazinet provided to the board suggested the long range effort necessary to finish the MassDOT submission process. A workbook helps applicants complete the design justification process, an implication of the detail demanded by the paperwork. An initial submission will need to be made within two years after a project number is assigned.
“We’re at the project initiation, project development phase,” Bazinet said. “Right now, the year they are funding is 2027 … So we will need to submit something for that by the summer of 2024.”
Board chair Christine Fowles acknowledged the length of time, five years or more, the application process will consume. She also lauded the work done on the new East Street bridge.
“We all agreed at the opening” of the renovated bridge, Fowles said, that the wait was worth it. “This could be an all new adventure for Southampton … I’m glad we’re not wasting any time, since the bridge has been completed, to jump right on this and really get this moving.”