The drivers have spoken: The City of Burlington will widen the too-tight intersection at St. Paul and Maple streets in response to numerous complaints from motorists that a redesigned curb there is causing havoc.
Known as a “bump-out,” the extended curb design is meant to lessen the road-crossing distance for pedestrians. It’s just one feature of the city’s Great Streets Initiative, which aims to create friendlier roadways for walkers and cyclists in the six blocks contained by Maple, Battery, Pearl and South Union streets. The ongoing construction project on St. Paul Street, from Main to Maple, is the city’s first Great Streets endeavor.
Vehicles collided with the curb nearly as soon as contractor S.D. Ireland installed it last month, in some cases causing hundreds of dollars in damage. Seven Days reported on the issue in its September 11 edition. Then, on Tuesday night, the city’s Department of Public Works announced that it will widen the intersection and angle the curbs to make the passageway more forgiving. The changes will cost $20,000 on top of the $4.9 million project budget, which is primarily paid with tax-increment financing dollars.
“Our team is a learning organization. We innovate, and we’re trying to address longstanding challenges,” DPW Director Chapin Spencer said. “The project overall has been remarkably successful.”
Crews will begin the re-redesign next week. Each curb on the intersection’s southern side will be reduced by four feet to widen the roadway by a total of eight feet. The resulting changes will create an opening of 30 feet — still eight feet narrower than before the project started.
The curbs there and at St. Paul and King streets will be “chamfered,” or angled down to create a duller edge, according to Spencer. He sees the modifications as a compromise between the oft-competing goals of drivers and pedestrians.
“Everything we do is trying to balance the variety of needs in the narrow rights-of-way we have in New England,” Spencer said. “This is an appropriate response to both the public input and our further engineering analysis.”
Spencer expects the work will take five days, but noted the city is still aiming to finish the entire project by month’s end. St. Paul between Maple and King streets remains closed to traffic and has been for months.
Spencer emphasized that Great Streets is a long-range planning goal that’s about more than curbs. Conceptual drawings for other Great Streets projects, such as on Main Street, show wider sidewalks, rain gardens, terraces for public art installations and covered bike parking.
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“Everything we do is trying to balance the variety of needs in the narrow rights-of-way we have in New England,” Spencer said.
First time hes not said that pedestrians and bicycles are DPWs priorities.
Anybody who ventures into Canada might have noticed that our friends up north have completed a new bridge into Montreal in less time than our city has taken to repave the top of St Paul St.
I am beginning to doubt our city’s ability to competently do much of anything that improves the lives of it’s tax paying electorate.
For all of you who care about this intersection, please buy your coffee at Perky Planet in the new Champlain College building. The owner relied on initial estimates from the city about this project that were woefully misleading. He’s lost a lot of money, and locals can help repair the damage our fair city has done to this remarkable owner and his wonderful crew.
They should have left it the way it was! Are the taxpayers going to have to pay for their mistake??
Bump outs are a waste of our money. If you want to slow traffic down, and it badly needs to, why not do it the old fashion way. Speed traps and well positioned patrol cars to stop the rabid habit of rolling through stop signs by both vehicles and bicycles. It is possible that the taxpayers won’t have to pay anything… Spencer might even achieve his dream of covered bike paths all over the city.
Tell me this is the Resume of a public works director.
https://www2.burlingtonvt.gov/Archives/ass…
Great news.
Next, time to return parking spots that have been eliminated. . .
and, access to the new north end from the belt-line. . .
and, to return working parking meters that accept coins, yes, even old-fashioned analog/mechanical style, instead of what has proven to be frequently dysfunctional meters – the new “techno-wiz” app-based parking meters – that steal patron’s money into the coin slots while continuing to blink, obliviously, at 0 minutes, as if no money has been taken. . . how many tax dollars spent on these “improvements”?
Why don’t we just go all in and convert the entire place to dirt roads and tent cities? With all the savings, we can subsidize move-out costs for working people and families – then we won’t need modern public infrastructure at all! Just one big, social-anarchist utopia of hippies and homebums, kicking back and sipping on malt liquor (limiting yourself to beer is a great way to deal with a polluted water source, y’know).
The university will remain, I guess, but the changes will just give them more promotional fodder to highlight campus diversity and inclusion.