Meeting Minutes 9-7-16
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
MEMORANDUM | To: Michael Trepanier Date: October 3, 2016 Project Manager From: Andreas Wolfe HSH Project No.: 2013061.15 Howard Stein Hudson Subject: MassDOT Highway Division Route 9 Corridor Improvement Project Hadley Board of Selectmen Briefing Meeting Notes of September 7, 2016 Overview On September 7, 2016, the Route 9 Corridor Improvement Project team provided a targeted briefing to the Hadley Board of Selectmen at the request of the Hadley’s Town Administrator, David Nixon. The briefing was held at Hadley Town Hall located at 100 Middle Street in Hadley and was televised on Hadley’s Public Access Television (HPAT). The meeting summarized herein served the purpose of providing both the Hadley Board of Selectmen and the larger Hadley community with an update on the alternatives analysis for the project while soliciting input and comments on the preferred alternative to be filed under the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act (MEPA) within the Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs. The Route 9 Corridor Improvement Project is made up of two components that inform and correspond to one another: The B43 Transit Mobility Study and the Middle to South Maple Street Widening Project. It was determined early in the process that in order to answer the ultimate question of a three versus four- lane cross section for the portion of Route 9 between Middle and South Maple Street, the project team must consider the benefits of an improved transit system while taking into account the primary goal of improving safety for all modes. Through the analysis of the B43 Transit Mobility Study as described in the meeting minutes summarized herein, the project team determined that the overall benefit to mobility and safety were best achieved under a three-lane cross section alternative for Route 9 between Middle and South Maple Street. Generally speaking, the Hadley Select Board supported the three-lane cross section alternative primarily due to the increased safety operations and congestion relief compared to the existing roadway configuration. While the project team is aware of the needed bicycle and pedestrian accommodates within this section of Route 9, it was reiterated by members’ of the Select Board that improved accommodates for these modes is desired and would likely be better achieved under a three-lane cross section due to roadway right-of-way and property impacts. Furthermore, it was generally agreed upon that a three-lane cross section would process similar traffic volumes compared to a four-lane cross section due to the inside travel lanes serving the left-turn function under a four-lane alternative. 11 Beacon Street, Suite 1010 | Boston, Massachusetts 02108 | 617.482.7080 www.hshassoc.com Page 1 While some concern was voiced regarding the B43 conceptual route plan and stop consolidations in Hadley, it was largely agreed upon that the recommendations would increase efficiency in transit use and ridership. Slight concern was also voiced comparing the cost differential between the three and four-lane alternatives; while it was determined that the three-lane alternative would be more cost effective to construct, overall it provides safer accommodations for all modes traveling the Route 9 corridor. Moving forward, it is anticipated that the project team will select a three-lane preferred alternative to be advanced into preliminary design. Detailed Meeting Minutes1 C: Michael Trepanier (MT): Good evening everyone, my name is Michael Trepanier and I am the project manager with MassDOT for the Route 9 Corridor Improvement Project. Tonight I’m joined by Project Development Engineer, Richard Masse out of the MassDOT District 2 office in Northampton. I am also joined by our team of consultants who have been working on the project for over two years including Carolyn Radisch, John Osorio, Jason DeGray, and our newest hire at MassDOT, Mark Kotowski. Our goal with tonight’s presentation is to give you a brief overview of what our team has done to date. Ultimately we want to discuss where we’ve gotten to from our starting point, where we’re going, and provide an overview of the transit study that was conducted for the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority (PVTA) B43 route. Since the last time I was before the Hadley Board of Selectmen we’ve learned a lot from a number of stakeholders in the area including the PVTA, Pioneer Valley Planning Commission (PVPC), the City of Northampton, the Town of Amherst, and the University of Massachusetts (UMass) Amherst. We brought all of these folks together to discuss the Route 9 Corridor Improvement Project, the best outcomes as well as goals for the job. The project area for the construction portion of the project runs between Middle to South Maple Street. We are ultimately talking about two projects that have the primary goals of increasing safety for all modes, relieving congestion along Route 9, and equipping Route 9 for the future including upgrades to accessible ramps, sidewalks as well as making the corridor more multimodal. We recognize that the existing corridor doesn’t function great for vehicles nor does it function well for people. This winter we conducted a long-term study for the PVTA B43 route to look at how improvements could be made to its operations in order to capitalize on the number of existing buses and to make those buses flow quicker to help draw off some of the single occupancy vehicles that are traveling along the corridor. Our goal is to reconstruct the roadway, rehabilitate the existing pavement, upgrade the drainage, and widen the roadway to increase capacity. 1 Herein “C” stands for comment, “Q” for question and “A” for answer. For a list of attendees, please see Appendix 1. For copies of meeting flipcharts, please see Appendix 2. Page 2 This project is made up of two major components. The first is the widening project which was the original reason I came to present to the Board of Selectmen. The purpose of widening Route 9 is to move more people through the corridor from the two large anchors of Northampton and Amherst. By widening Route 9 we are also able to alleviate some of the congestion without building another highway type road like Route 116. After consulting with town employees and people who have been involved in our stakeholder group including Donald Pipczynski, we found that in order to get vehicular capacity out of the corridor we must improve transit operations and get more people and students riding the bus. This is a much larger scale transit mobility study that isn’t limited to just the piece of the corridor that we want to reconstruct. We’re looking at how the route operates, where the passengers are being picked up and dropped off, and really digging into that analysis. Once we take into account those improvements and other factors such as safety and private property impacts, we’ll determine if we really need four-lanes like the rest of the corridor or if three-lanes will be sufficient. This has been a long ongoing process since we first met with that larger stakeholder group in July 2015. We had a special subcommittee of folks that were interested in how to analyze the transit aspect of the project and they provided great guidance on what to look at. We held our first large scale meeting at Hopkins Academy in September just under a year ago. Since then we have done some targeted outreach with groups such as the Pioneer Valley Chapter of MassBike. We then held another set of meetings after we analyzed some of the various alternatives and have been invited to present to the Board of Selectmen tonight so that we could give the board an opportunity to see what we’ve done and weigh in on the process. Tonight also allows us to reach the broader audience of the Hadley community which we are hoping to hear more from as well. At this point I’m going to turn it over to Carolyn to discuss the B43 Transit Mobility Study. B43 Transit Mobility Study C: Carolyn Radisch (CR): Hi everyone, my name is Carolyn Radisch. As Michael mentioned, our goal is to get more people using transit in the Route 9 corridor. In order to do this we need to make the buses more convenient and efficient. This means less time wasted in congestion and delays of inefficient routing, more attractive waiting areas, and signal prioritization. What we’re looking at is a version of bus rapid transit (BRT) that we can implement to make transit more effective and attractive for transit users. Some of the characteristics of what we are calling BRT-lite include the buses traveling with vehicles in what is called mixed flow lanes. There is a range of BRT components starting with the gold standard which is similar to a rail system on wheels with dedicated right-of-way. In this scenario we don’t have space for that so we’re looking at buses in the traffic flow with traffic signal priority. This is a big item we can do to reduce the delay at the signals and make the buses more efficient. Stop consolidation will look at removing some of the stops that are not heavily used right now in order to reduce delay for the buses. Typically with BRT, you are looking at a quarter to half mile spacing for transit stops. Page 3 Another transit item for improvement is waiting areas and shelters. As you can see, our goal is to make it more comfortable to wait for the bus. Real time travel information, for example, “next bus arrives in 5 minutes” will make it easier and incentivize transit use.