North Adams Neighborhood Opposed to Bike Path Plan
 West End neighbors gathered at Greylock School to discuss the proposed bike path route. More on the bike path, including a survey, can be found here. |
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — West End residents were loud clear about the possibility of a bike path going through their neighborhood.
No way.
A public session Thursday night at Greylock School was to be focused on residents at the so-called "pinch point" in the heavily residential area along Barbour Street between Phelps and Hawthorne avenues but neighbors from throughout the affected region showed up to express their opposition.
They cited fears over traffic, parking, crime and littering as reasons not to route the path through the heavily residential area despite efforts by Berkshire Regional Planning Commission's Lauren Gaherty to mitigate their concerns.
"You didn't hear our concern," said Patti Lentine of Phelps Avenue. "We don't want it in our neighborhood.
"Period."
Mayor Richard Alcombright cautioned that the potential routes "are lines on a map" at this point and that nothing is set in stone.
"I'm hearing what you're saying, you don't want it," he said, adding the answer to Thursday's meeting was "to go back to the drawing board."
The city is trying to pull together a route that will link the downtown to the planned Williamstown bike path running from Cole Field to the Spruces. The goal is eventually to hook up to the Ashuwillticook Rail Trail on the Adams end.
Williamstown is at 100 percent design and has $619,000 toward engineering. That section is expected to cost $4.9 million, which is already set aside. North Adams is at 25 percent design, largely because of the difficulty in finding usable land for the route. It would have to have the route determined before applying for grant funding.
"We're trying to catch up a little to Williamstown," said Gaherty, who is acting as the consultant on the city's plan. "Our job is to try to work with everyone across the city to try and make a bike path for the city that everybody wants, that everybody said they want, that they can get the money for."
The idea of a bike path was popular at meetings held through the city during the development of the Vision 2030 master plan. Meeting attendees questioned the percentage of the city's population that those meetings included but Gaherty said it came up at every Vision 2030 session.
"Every single meeting, every single neighborhood, residents kept saying they would like to see a bike path that connected to the Ashuwillticook Rail Trail," she said. "That's what's driving this meeting."
The route would go through the airport and come out at Barbour Street, run through that neighborhood, then south along the river before crossing Route 2 near Roberts Drive. The street was proposed because of the wetlands, highway, hills, railroad and lack of public lands on the north side. Several options for running the path through the neighborhood included one-way streets, a shared street between cars and bikes and marking for bike lanes on both sides. Attempts at rerouting ran into more driveways to cross and slopes above the recommended 5 percent maximum.
Using Route 2 had been discarded at an earlier meeting when riders expressed discomfort using the heavily trafficked way for family biking; Massachusetts Avenue is narrow, winding and sloping. Using the riverway ran into the railway, berms, private property and areas to narrow for a 10-foot wide path.
Gaherty said respondents to a survey of residents along the 14-year-old Ashuwillticook Rail Trail, which runs through downtown Adams and several residential areas, found that most believe there has been positive or no change. Even the few who disliked the path used it, she said, and most surveys found a bike path raises property values.
She also said police in the three towns it crosses reported no rises in crime, other than some cars broken into at the Lanesborough parking area near the Berkshire Mall. The main complaints had been parking, rude users and dogs.
A couple of law enforcement officers who live in the West End said they didn't believe that crime didn't occur on the trail. One said a drug user had been arrested on the trail, the other that police could be heard on the radio being called to incidents on it.
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Benjamin Austin, a North Adams officer, was concerned that "people of a lessor moral character" would use a bike path to move through the area.
"You are going to be giving them a direct access to our neighborhood," he said.
Another West End resident said she'd lived next to the bike path in Burlington, Vt., and seen crime had rise. Another woman said she didn't want to bike path users to intrude on her back yard. Several raised the issues of traffic and lack of parking, especially around Alcombright Field, and the route's proximity to Greylock School.
Gaherty said many of their concerns could be addressed through engineering and design, such as traffic calming features like speed humps, better signage and fencing.
Several residents repeated they were not against a bike path, they just didn't think it was appropriate for their neighborhood.
The crowd frequently interjected during her presentation. They also refused to break out into the traditional groups of a charette to discuss what they'd like to see — because they didn't want to see a bike path at all.
"If a vote or petition says 75 percent of the neighborhood doesn't want it here at all, will it still go through here?" asked Anthony Molinari, who said he'd moved from Long Island, N.Y., three years ago to find a quiet neighborhood.
Alcombright said the point of the meeting had been to weigh what the neighborhood had to say.
"I am empathetic to your angst," he said. "The thing is we have a great opportunity for the city of North Adams here along with the town of Adams and along with the town of Williamstown to have a path that will take us from Cole Field in Williamstown to the Berkshire Mall ...
"I can't let go of the idea."
Tags: Ashuwillticook Rail Trail, bike path, west end,
