Public trust in redesigning Highland Avenue is eroding as a result of government inaction, a Somerville city councilor said Thursday at the first council meeting after a summer break.
“Years and years of misleading” by the Mayor’s Office have led to growing frustration, councilor Ben Ewen-Campen said. He was the lead sponsor of a resolution that passed unanimously, with seven co-sponsors, asking the mayor to explain delays on repaving a road of potholes and cracked asphalt that stretches 1.7 miles from Davis Square nearly to East Somerville – one a critic online has quipped “qualifies as off-road. Just dirt would be better.”
Information on a city project website has not been updated in more than 18 months and contains community meeting information from the fall of 2021, almost four years ago. Though not blaming the Mobility Division as the maintainer of the site, “when we mislead the public for years at a time, it breaks the trust that we all have to work so hard to build up with residents, and it is incredibly difficult to rebuild,” Ewen-Campen said.
The city promised to install two-way protected bicycle lanes by 2030 as part of a bicycle network plan, install new sidewalks and repave road surfaces from Davis Square to McGrath Highway. Paving was envisioned in the fall of 2023 as starting as soon as June 2024.
https://embed.documentcloud.org/documents/26079315-250829-highland-presentation/?embed=1
Work could start as early as next summer; a capital investment plan indicated design and outreach funding would be available as soon as this past July, but any work on Highland Avenue awaits completion of the Spring Hill sewer separation project. Crews finished paving and lining School and Summer streets in early July and were working on final punch list items.
Bikes, walkers and rollers
The meeting agenda included several items related to how Somervillians and visitors can get around more easily and safely.
The director of engineering will need to respond to a 16-page walk audit with short- and long-term recommendations to make Union Square safer, more accessible and more comfortable for all users.
The city could apply for state grants to buy small crosstown electric vehicles, councilor Kristen Strezo suggested in an order, giving as an example an eight-seat, 100 percent electric microbus that would be paid for in future community benefits deals with developers to help in “getting people out of their cars.” The housing and community development committee discusses this item as soon as September.
Councilor Naima Sait wants an update on adding speed-limit and no-motorized-vehicle signs on the Community Bike Path, while Ewen-Campen requested creation of a youth summer job watering public trees by bicycle and a better signal cadence to ease traffic in Union Square.
The next scheduled meeting of the Traffic and Parking Committee, which takes up the walk audit findings, left-turn changes in Union Square and bike path signs, is Sept. 29.
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Can’t even pave a road and KB thinks she deserves reelection lol
I’ve lived on the same street in Somerville for 35 years and it’s in awful shape – patch, patch, patch but never repaved once – and lots of the roads around town are the same or worse!