Contents
Safest and lightest design
Bikes may ride on sidewalk
Off-road on-road confusion
Result of ten years working with professionals
Plan on the table for two years
$2.4 million forfeited if no shared-use path
$70 million at stake
Bike boulevard for 4-7% of cyclists
Fuss & O’Neill 2015 study obsolete
Increased use once Rt. 9 bike path opens
“The shared-use path is the safest and lightest footprint design for
pedestrians, bicyclists, and limited-mobility users”
The shared-use path is not the safest solution for pedestrians, limited-mobility users,
youngsters playing in front of their homes or people walking dogs, who will have to deal
with bicycles coming at them from both directions on the 8-foot path they’re
using. Numerous bicycle transportation design manuals warn about
problems mixing pedestrians with bicycles, and explicitly caution
against using a sidewalk as a bike path. (See
Future Proofing.)And having bicycles ride immediately adjacent to blind driveways introduces new hazards for cyclists: residents backing up may not be able to see bicycles approaching (from either direction), and cyclists may be unable to see a car backing up until it’s on the bike path. When bicycles ride in the street, they approach driveways from only one direction — the same direction as cars — and they are easily visible to motorists: before a car enters the street, drivers and cyclists can see each other from more than 100 feet away. Another safety issue has to do with right-of-way: When cyclists ride in the street, they understand that they have right-of-way priority over motorists backing up and don’t even think about driveways. They are likely to believe they have a similar right-of-way on the shared-use path, with potentially disastrous consequences due to limited visibility. (See our Safety Concerns letter.)
The planned shared-use path is less safe for pedestrians, and it’s not even clearly safer for bicyclists: it trades a hazard that all cyclists are used to dealing with (cars passing them) for different hazards that they can’t see and may not even be aware exist. The shared-use path looks good if you think of everything around it as cardboard cutouts rather than a living neighborhood, but if you put yourself in our shoes, actually living here — walking and playing on the sidewalk, walking dogs and pulling in & out of driveways — serious problems with bicycles on the sidewalk become apparent.
“lightest footprint”
The shared-use path has the “lightest footprint” only in the sense of
the amount of asphalt laid across the street. Impact to the
neighborhood — namely, the loss of a sidewalk reserved for pedestrian
use — is part of what WE think of as the “footprint” of the Greenway
committee’s plan. Loss of half the parking on the street is another
part of what WE think of as the “footprint.” The shared-use path is NOT
the “lightest footprint” design in our view.“limited-mobility users”
It seems obvious to us that an ADA compliant sidewalk with no competing bicycles serves
limited-mobility users best — serves ALL pedestrians best. That’s why we
don’t want our sidewalk invaded by bicycles.Note that, realistically, limited-mobility users (or children on tricycles) are likely to be local residents. Below South Main Street, there are 1.3 miles of rail trail before you reach the next street. When the Route 9 bike path is completed, there will be 2 miles of bike path above South Main before you reach Williamsburg. Limited mobility users are unlikely to walk 1.3 or 2 miles to get to South Main St.; they will almost certainly be local residents — who have nearly unanimously spoken in favor of keeping the option which is safest for them: a sidewalk reserved for pedestrians.
In an options
matrix prepared by the VHB engineering company,
“bicycles may ride on sidewalk” is given as a downside for the bike
boulevard proposal.
The neighborhood is willing to accept this possibility; it’s not a
problem for us. We suspect that the occasional youngster whose parents
are uncomfortable with them riding in the street (think tricycles, training
wheels) may wind up on the sidewalk — as they might even now — and we
don’t object to that.Massachusetts General Law c.85, §11B specifically says that bicycles may be ridden on sidewalks, when necessary in the interest of safety. We prefer “may be ridden” to will be ridden, which will be the case if our sidewalk is replaced with a bike path.
In the same VHB document, they list confusion around off-road, on-road
transitions as a problem for a bike boulevard on South Main St.
Nearly everyone who uses a bike path rides on a road for some
distance in order to reach the path, and does so without getting
confused. The Massachusetts Department of Transportation’s
Municipal
Resource Guide for Bikeability points
out that bicycle boulevards are used to connect disjoint portions of
dedicated bike trails — exactly the function a bike boulevard would
serve on South Main Street. Wayfinding markings, including
sharrows, are an integral part of bicycle boulevard designs
which serve to obviate any bicyclist confusion. South Main St. above
Fort Hill Rd. is only 1/4 mile of straight road with only one
significant intersection and no confusing elements to speak of.The most confusing facet for bicyclists may be having a shared-use path between the rail trail dismount and Fort Hill Road, and a bike boulevard above Fort Hill. This confusion can be eliminated by making all of South Main Street, from the dismount to the library, be a bike boulevard and constructing a sidewalk for pedestrians on the west side of South Main below Fort Hill. This is the plan that was recommended by Fuss & O’Neill in 2015, and is a solution that would spare the cutting of more than a dozen trees and cost vastly less money.
“we arrived at our design proposal after ten years of working with
professional engineers in consultation with MassDOT and with the goal of
creating the safest design with the lightest footprint.”
The proposed shared-use path first saw public light in 2022, not “ten years” ago,
and news of it first reached the neighborhood only in 2023. Prior to
that, the Greenway committee’s publicly available plans for South Main St. were to
implement “complete streets” elements (bicycles sharing the road with
cars), and the neighborhood was supportive of these plans. The
transportation and civil engineering firm that the town paid to
review South Main St. (Fuss & O’Neill)
recommended
keeping pedestrians and bicyclists separate — advice the Greenway committee appeared to be
following until 2022.Regarding “professional engineers”: Engineering is one thing, but bicycle traffic design is another. The firm that engineered the current shared-use path proposal:
- claims that South Main St. has traffic levels of “~2000” cars per day, whereas the actual level, as measured by Fuss & O’Neill, is only about 800 cars per day. (See Traffic Volume on South Main St.);
- seems to have been unfamiliar with bike boulevards as described in MassDOT’s Municipal Resource Guide for Bikeability; they consistently speak only of “sharrows,” which are just one element of a bike boulevard design;
- incorrectly states that sharrows are not permitted on “collector” roads. MassDOT guidelines for bicycle accommodations are based to traffic volume levels and speed limits, not road classification;
- failed to identify safety issues surrounding blind driveways immediately adjacent to the shared-use path.
We are not impressed by the level of professionalism evidenced by the shared-use path design and arguments in favor of it for South Main St.
“The current design has been on the table for roughly two years,
inclusive of numerous public forums and updates to town officials.”
The April 2022 Greenway forum, which first revealed plans for a shared-use path,
took place in the wake of the record-breaking Omicron Covid wave. This
meeting did not register with the South Main St. neighborhood (no effort having been made to
notify abutters of the change in plans for the street), and there
is no record of comments resulting from the meeting. The proposed South Main St. shared-use
path appears in the slideshow from the meeting only as “design concept” lines sketched
atop photographs in three of the 41 slides from the meeting.
(From the 2022 Greenway Forum presentation. See slides 26-28.)
The next meeting, in April 2023, was announced via flyers attached to telephone poles in the neighborhood (still no direct contact of abutters) and resulted in immediate strong protest from residents of the street. During this meeting, the objections of nearly half the residents — those who live above Bridge St. — were ruled invalid because at this point the work on upper South Main St. had been turned over to the MassDOT; residents would have to take their objections to the DOT, not the Greenway committee. Between the 2022 and 2023 meetings (a time when the neighborhood knew nothing of the shared-use-path plans) the town commissioned engineering plans for the path, submitted the Greenway committee’s plans to the MassDOT, and got their approval — without ever effectively informing abutters that their sidewalk was going to be turned into a bike path.“If there is no shared use path component to the lower South Main Street project, then the State Transportation
Bond will be forfeited.”
(From 10/19/2023 Meeting Notes.)
Throughout 2023, we were told that the $2.4 million T-Bond funding for South Main St. could be used only for the shared-use path proposed
by the Greenway committee, that the funding would be forfeited if a bike boulevard were built instead. We asked if this was really true and were told
that VHB would look into it. Hearing nothing from VHB or the town, we wound up
writing to MassDOT
ourselves. They investigated the matter and finally
wrote back
saying that the T-Bond funding could be used for either design. If we had not written to MassDOT ourselves, we suspect we would still
be dealing with this false claim.“The Mill River Greenway SUP is the driving force behind the state’s
commitment of over $70M in new infrastructure projects to Williamsburg,
slated to provide three new bridges, substantially improved climate
resilience along the Mill River corridor, and an
economic/recreational/cultural resource that will bring many benefits to
the town. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for Williamsburg,
which we believe will not come again if the town decides to oppose these
projects.”
The two-mile Route 9 bike path project is
estimated
to cost $52 million, and, per MassDOT, is not contingent on bicycle accommodations along South Main Street.
Two of the three bridges mentioned are being replaced, at an
estimated
cost of $10 million, because the Bridge St. bridge in Haydenville has been
condemned, not because of Greenway activities.
Bicycle accommodations along South Main St. are being funded by a $2.4 million T-bond allocation,
which, per MassDOT, can be used to pay for either a shared-use path or a bicycle boulevard.The South Main St. neighborhood is not opposing three new bridges, improved climate resilience or the Route 9 bike path, and Williamsburg will not lose a $70 million “once-in-a-generation opportunity” if South Main St. is made a bicycle boulevard instead of turning our sidewalk into a bike path. We regard statements like the above as a tactic of deception which make it seem like heeding the concerns and wishes of the residents of the South Main St. will cost the town $70 million. It won’t.
The Greenway committee’s language above may give one the impression that Williamsburg has been “given” money for the South Main St. shared-use path, as if some billionaire made a donation. This is misleading: the $2.4 million T-bond allocation for “Mill River Greenway improvements” is money the state of Massachusetts will be borrowing. Taxpayers (including you) will be paying that loan back with interest. If the allocated money isn’t entirely spent because a less-expensive bicycle accommodation is implemented, taxpayers will have less to pay back.
“The Bike Boulevard would be provided for the 4%-7% of bicyclists who are
more accomplished and able to handle more risk, while the Shared Use
Path would provide a facility for the other 93% of bicyclists as well as
the remaining pedestrians of all ages and abilities and those that rely
on movement aides and devices...”
As described above, we believe an ADA-compliant sidewalk free of bicycle
traffic is the best and safest way of providing accommodation for
pedestrians and folks who rely on movement aides and devices.The claim that 93% of bicyclists would ride on the shared-use path rather than on a bike boulevard is simply wrong, a result of looking at a graphic illustration and “reasoning” from there. If you read the original papers where the 4-7% figure comes from, you learn that the least-skilled bicyclists in the Portland area (which has lots of bike boulevards) are just as comfortable riding on a bike boulevard as on a separated bike path. See Bicyclist Preferences for a full explanation of this topic.
“The Fuss & O’Neill study [which recommended keeping
pedestrians and bicyclists separate, with bicycles using the road] was completed in 2015, since which state
regulations, Fed and State DOT best practices, and the street’s
classification have changed.”
Our MassDOT reference material is from 2019 and is current: see the
Municipal
Resource Guide for Bikeability. Keeping pedestrians and bicycles
separate is timeless advice which has not changed.South Main Street’s classification is not relevant; bicycle accommodation guidelines are based on traffic volume and speed limit, not street classification, and the volume of traffic on the street has not increased since 2015. See Traffic Levels on South Main St.
Again, per MassDOT 2019 guidelines, a bicycle boulevard is the form of accommodation recommended for South Main Street. A bike boulevard is an All Ages & Abilities accommodation for a street like ours, and bike boulevards are used to connect disjoint sections of dedicated bike paths — exactly the purpose one would serve here on South Main St. The abutters along South Main St. above Fort Hill overwhelmingly oppose the SUP and support creation of a bicycle boulevard on our street.
“We reiterate that our proposed design is in anticipation of FUTURE
increased use stemming from the extension of the MRG to downtown
Williamsburg.”
See Future Proofing,
which describes how increased bike and pedestrian levels
are likely to result in safety problems on shared-use paths — particularly on paths
as narrow as the 8 foot path proposed by the Greenway committee. Quoting the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials’
Guide for the Development of Bicycle Facilities:In very rare circumstances, a reduced width of 8 ft (2.4 m) may be used where the following conditions prevail: Bicycle traffic is expected to be low, even on peak days or during peak hours; and Pedestrian use of the facility is not expected to be more than occasional.The residents of South Main Street use their sidewalk regularly, not “occasionally,” and if the Greenway committee’s prediction of increased future use are correct, then bicycle traffic is unlikely to be “low.” The proposed shared-use path is not properly designed for increased bicycle and pedestrian use stemming from the opening of the Route 9 bike path. In contrast, a bicycle boulevard is would be able to handle a large increase in bike traffic easily.