From his window in the offices of Northampton's Look Park, Ray Ellerbrook has a bird's eye view of Route 9, directly in front of the park—and he doesn't like what he sees.
Cars speed by on the road, the main route for drivers traveling between Northampton and the neighboring hilltowns. Since 2002, when he became director of the park, Ellerbrook said, there have been three accidents involving drivers who barreled down Bridge Road (which runs perpendicular to Route 9), through a stop sign and into the park's wrought-iron fence. Cars turning off Bridge Road—especially those turning left, heading to Florence Center or the park's entrance—can back up as they wait for their turn; sometimes they grow impatient and make risky turns into oncoming traffic. Every morning, when park rangers venture out to Route 9 (also known as North Main Street) to set up pedestrian crossing signs, they're taking their lives in their hands, Ellerbrook said.
The area is so bad that the Mass. Highway Department has recognized it as an especially dangerous intersection, and dedicated state funds to improve it. After years of planning, construction is expected to begin next year on a $2 million traffic roundabout, the city's first. Ellerbrook and others believe the project will dramatically improve both congestion and safety in the area, by slowing traffic while keeping cars moving through the exchange.
Francis "Corky" Mandeville also has a close view of the intersection, from the kitchen window of the North Main Street home where he's lived for 50 years. "It's a well-traveled road, no doubt about that," said Mandeville, who often sees cars rush right through the stop sign at Bridge Road.
But like a number of his neighbors, Mandeville thinks a roundabout is an overblown, costly solution that could be solved by the simple addition of a traffic light. Mandeville will feel the effects of the roundabout more profoundly than most; his house abuts the land where the roundabout will be built. So he's particularly rankled by what he and other nearby homeowners say was the lack of communication with neighbors about the project.
"There wasn't any discussion," Mandeville says of a public meeting held in June about the project. "It was to tell you what you're going to get—period."
City officials describe the roundabout as an exciting new approach to traffic management, one that's been used to great effect in other parts in the country. But dampening that enthusiasm is a concern that's come to be familiar in the city: was the public process around the project really public, or were the community members who will be most directly affected left out of the conversation?
The roundabout, with four entry/exit points, is to be built on a plot of park-owned land across from the park's entrance at the corner of Bridge Street and Route 9. Plans call for an 18-foot lane for traffic, with a 22-foot "truck apron" in the center to accommodate larger vehicles. Crosswalks will be added on either side of the roundabout on Route 9 and on Bridge Road, and a paved section will connect a bike path from Bridge Road to the park.
In addition, the entrance of the park will be shifted, to align more closely with Bridge Road. (Right now, drivers heading from Bridge to the park navigate a cumbersome dog-leg.) A landscaped island will sit in the center of the circle, and new sidewalks, curbs, drainage and other improvements will be included. (The plans can be viewed at www.northamptonma.gov/dpw/Engineering.)
The project will involve two permanent land takings—of the park property and of a piece of land owned by National Grid—as well as several temporary easements from neighbors during construction. Ten trees will also be chopped down. Ned Huntley, director of Northampton's Department of Public Works, said the final plans have been submitted to Mass Highway for approval. The project is expected to be put out to bid this fall; construction would begin next year and take 18 months.
While earlier reports estimated the cost at about $1 million, over the years, that number has climbed to just over $2 million. Construction will be funded by the Highway Department, with the city and Look Park picking up design costs, which so far have come to about $150,000.
City Councilor David Narkewicz, chair of the Transportation and Parking Committee, is a big fan of roundabouts, which he describes as an innovative approach to slowing and managing traffic. And, like other city officials, he takes pains to distinguish a roundabout from a rotary (in fact, he prefers the term "modern roundabout").
"Most people have nightmares of rotaries—at the Cape, or Greenfield, or rotaries in general," Narkewicz said. Rotaries, he noted, are "high-speed interchanges"; roundabouts are smaller and designed to slow traffic. He points to national studies showing drops in accident rates when rotaries are built. "Any time you create low speeds, even the crashes that do happen are not as serious," he said. Rotaries also are better for the environment, Narkewicz said, by eliminating emissions from idling cars waiting at traffic lights or stop signs.
Narkewicz suggested that neighborhood opposition springs from misunderstandings about what the roundabout will look like. "It's an issue of change," he said. "It's kind of a newfangled thing, and people have a bias about the rotaries they're familiar with."
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To Mandeville, the roundabout is an excessive solution. "I think it's a waste of money—a big waste of money," he said, noting that there are plenty of other important ways the city could spend state highway money. (A recent editorial in the Daily Hampshire Gazette also questioned spending the money on the roundabout project in light of other pressing road needs, such as potholes. "Given the city's road paving trend, there's a real question about whether this improvement is necessary," the paper noted.)
Like a number of neighbors, Mandeville thinks traffic problems could be addressed with a traffic light at the intersection of Bridge and Route 9. "It would be a lot cheaper, and it would more than take care of [the problems]," said Mandeville.
Lisa Leary, whose Hayward Road home abuts the park, also favors a traffic light. "My feeling is, the safest traffic is stopped traffic," she said. She worries about how large trucks will be able to navigate a roundabout. "All of these things will now be in the soup—bikes, pedestrians, tractor-trailer trucks," she said. And she wonders how the lengthy construction period will affect commuters from the hilltowns, and hill town businesses that depend on customers coming from Northampton.
Leary does not buy the argument that a rotary is a "greener" approach than a traffic light ("Cars produce pollution—it doesn't matter if they're sitting at a traffic light or going around a circle," she said), particularly given the tree loss necessitated by the project. "You're cutting down 10 trees. What's greener than nature itself?" she asked.
Like other abutters, Leary was notified of a public hearing about improvements to the intersection in the summer of 2007. Then, she said, little else was heard until the June meeting. "I felt like [city officials] didn't really listen. They just debated with people. & It was basically: This is what we've decided. This is what we're going to do," she said.
"The public process piece is really seriously flawed, in my opinion," Leary added. "They just charged ahead."
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Huntley takes exception to accusations that the public was cut out of the decision-making process. The DPW and Board of Public Works "have had dozens of meetings on this thing," he said. "Where were [the neighbors]? They never showed up on any of those things."
That, Leary countered, is because they weren't aware of the meetings, which are typically not as well publicized as larger community forums. "It doesn't mean people don't care," she said. "They [didn't] know about [the meetings]." And, Huntley acknowledged, until recently meeting notices on the city website didn't include an agenda of what would be discussed.
The city did consider adding a traffic light to the intersection, Huntley said, but studies showed a roundabout was a better solution, one that would prevent waiting cars from stacking up. "Yes, at peak times you'll be waiting, but you'll be slowly moving along," he said.
A roundabout will also require less maintenance and will save the city the electricity costs associated with a traffic light, Huntley said, adding that a traffic signal at this complex intersection would require 16 to 18 separate lights. A roundabout, he said, "is a well-engineered solution. It's a perfect fit for up there."
Narkewicz said he understands why some neighbors feel blindsided by the project, given the time lag between the first public meeting, in 2007, and the recent one—the result, he said, of the slow pace at which these kinds of state-funded projects move. But, he said, he's worked hard to get information out to the public, from emailing studies about roundabout safety to interested residents to preparing videos for the community access channel.
"I am, and I know other people are, really committed to doing a lot of public education about roundabouts," Narkewicz said.
Still, some neighbors say they feel like the city is trying to sell them on the idea of roundabouts without ever having sought their input or alternative ideas.
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Ellerbrook said he initially hoped for a simpler solution to the area's problems. "Just put a traffic signal out there and it will be super," he recalled thinking. But then, Ellerbrook said, he saw engineers' plans showing just how many lights would be needed to handle traffic at the intersection. "I wasn't happy with it," he said.
Nor was he happy with the idea of a roundabout at first. "I was envisioning a rotary, where people are speeding around at 60 miles an hour. I couldn't get the concept out of my head," Ellerbrook said. "I was longing for my one signal."
He came around on the roundabout idea after attending a Mass Highway presentation, where engineers for the state of New York—which already has numerous roundabouts—used computer models to show how they work, including how they slow traffic while keeping vehicles moving. "After that four-hour session I was very comfortable with it," Ellerbrook said.
While a roundabout is a new concept for the area, "people will learn what to expect over time," he said. Indeed, they'd better. Plans are also underway to build two roundabouts in south Amherst, in the Atkins Farms area.
