Build Both
In May 2024, a compromise was proposed to build both an 8 foot sidewalk / shared-use path, paved in concrete, and a bicycle boulevard on the street. The rationale was to encourage as many cyclists as possible to ride on the street and to provide a wider sidewalk for the few cyclists who wouldn’t ride in the street.The proposal looked promising until June 6, when VHB engineering declared that it simply would not design bike boulevard elements into the plan for South Main Street, claiming that it was not allowed by MassDOT regulations. (A claim we insist is false; see here.)
The town said that it might be able to paint sharrows on the road and install bike boulevard signs after construction was complete, but they also said that they might not if regulations or liability concerns prevented it. Given that the town’s sole professional engineering authority had declared that a bike boulevard wasn’t allowed on South Main Street, we regarded this “maybe” offer as unlikely to be fulfilled. In a neighborhood meeting on June 10, residents emphatically rejected the town’s no-guarantees proposal.
Early email communication about the proposal can be seen here.
The pitch we made to the neighborhood in favor of the proposal is here.
Final communications with the town about the proposal are here.
Wetzel Meetings
In June and July of 2024, residents wrote a series of letters to state agencies requesting a review of Greenway plans for South Main Street (samples here). In August, MassDOT replied to the neighborhood, saying that, “The town of Williamsburg has stated that they will conduct a public meeting to work on resolving design issues,” and “MassDOT is optimistic that town officials and South Main Street residents can reach some level of agreement, so that when construction is underway, the project can enjoy broad public support.”In September, the South Main Street neighborhood was invited to the first of a series of meetings with Select Board chair Paul Wetzel to discuss an alternative proposal for the street, that of a separate sidewalk and bike path. The invitation and design sketches can be seen here. This design, as well as the ones put forth in subsequent meetings, were already familiar to the neighborhood because they had all been outlined in a document from VHB engineering, the so-called “Bike Facility Matrix,” from December 2023, which can be seen here.
The neighborhood’s objections to the separated bike path design were that it is overkill for the street, involving a large increase in the amount of paving, that it still involves bidirectional bike traffic crossing in front of driveways, something which is warned against in bike transportation engineering manuals, and problems with snow removal. Our response to the town can be found here.
In this first meeting, the owner of the Joe’s Garage bike shop suggested that what the street needed was bike lanes on either side of the road. After the meeting, the neighborhood discussed this proposal and realized that, despite it involving the loss of roadside parking along the length of the street, the residents were willing to accept it. Our email to the town describing this proposal can be found here.
In October, the neighborhood received an invitation to a second meeting, with a counter-proposal from the Greenway committee for bike lanes (available here). In short, the Greenway committee insisted on 11-foot vehicular lanes (vs. 10 foot in the neighborhood’s proposal) and 5-foot bike lanes (vs. 4 foot in the neighborhood design). The net result is again an excessive amount of pavement for our low-volume neighborhood street, and unacceptable encroachment of paving on the western side of the street. Our response to the town can be found here.
In the invitation to the second meeting, Paul Wetzel wrote, “The Town will not consider any other Greenway alternatives besides the three that have been presented: Shared use path, bike path separated from the sidewalk, and bike lanes on either side of the street.” So much for compromising or the Greenway’s mission statement of working with the neighborhood. The TOWN declares what the choices are and you have to pick one of them. And by making sure that every proposal other than the original shared-use path design involved egregious amounts of pavement, the Greenway committee made sure that every one of their counter-proposals would be rejected by the neighborhood.
In the aftermath of the second meeting, the neighborhood once again wrote to state authorities, asking them to postpone writing a contract for the Greenway’s original design and issuing a Notice to Proceed for the project. The letter can be found here.
A third meeting was scheduled for October 20; invitation here. Our response to the town can be found here.
Aftermath
* Wetzel meets with KP law & VHB--no nbhd reps or the document Sayre asked me to write* Wetzel's concluding letter
* DOT writes contract, issues notice to proceed-- for the original G'way design we've been objecting to since we first learned about it