PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Driven by feedback from the public, the city will be reconfiguring the downtown corridor once more by making it all one-lane traffic and pushing on-street parking over to the curb.

 

This project is being paid for by a recently awarded $162,880 state Shared Streets and Spaces Grant — the second one Pittsfield has secured — and corrects issues that surfaced with the pilot installations launched last fall that changed segments of North Street into one lane and moved on-street parking away from the curb.

 

"We're taking care of three main issues that we noticed and heard from the public and we noticed happening," Commissioner of Public Services & Utilities Ricardo Morales said on Monday. "One of them is the discontinuity between the pilot installations that we did in the fall. We're not ditching the pilot from the fall, we're just correcting some issues."

 

The new will address discontinuity and lack of signage between the pilot areas, bike lanes and parking, improvement of the parklets built to aid outdoor dining, and a full comprehensive evaluation of the plan.  

 

About $140,000 will be used for the street work, $16,000 to build up the parklets to sidewalk level, and $6,000 for the study with an engineering firm.

 

Morales said the city aims to have the improvements done by the end of May, as the project has been awarded and a meeting is set with the contractor, but is realistic about possible setbacks that may come into play.

 

Last fall, the city received $238,826 for Shared Streets and Spaces projects from the state Department of Transportation to support 20 placemaking projects and the pilot was applied to two sections of the downtown corridor right after Park Square and in front of the Pittsfield Family YMCA.  

 

These segments were made into one-lane traffic and feature a bike lane next to the sidewalk and parking spaces in between that and the travel lane.

 

The grant program provides grants as small as $5,000 and as large as $300,000 for cities and towns to quickly implement or expand improvements to sidewalks, curbs, streets, on-street parking spaces, and off-street parking lots in support of public health, safe mobility, and renewed commerce in their communities.

 

Residents and business owners expressed concern for the new configuration, especially with the sudden change of two lanes down to one and the parking spaces that floated in between the bike lanes and travel lanes.

 

The new configuration will feature parking by the curb, a buffer, a bike lane, and then another buffer before the travel lane. This will be continuous throughout the downtown corridor — which runs from Park Square to Waconah Street — for traveler comfort.

 

The improvements also address outdoor dining parklets that were installed as extensions to the sidewalks, as they will be built up to sidewalk level. Morales said that section of the project is "a little difficult" because of the current inflated price of lumber but the grant will make it possible.

 

"It was great that we were able to get grant money again and not spending city, taxpayer money to make those changes to address the concerns that we saw and to expand it," he said. "Without this grant, we probably would have just corrected, somehow, what we had installed, and that's it."

 

Though these changes are driven by public comment, Morales made it clear that there is additional public input to come.  The city presented the project to the downtown merchant community through Downtown Pittsfield Inc. about a month ago and it was "well-received."

 

"They do recognize that going down to one lane is not a bad idea, and that no one liked the one-lane setup we had with the bicycle lane on the inside, there was too much of a change for people here apparently, and I understand that," Morales said. "And no one in the merchant community liked not having that continuity, so those things are all being addressed."  

 

Downtown Pittsfield Inc. was informed that work had been awarded and what would be happening on each block. There will also be additional public sessions where residents can voice their opinions on the changes. Construction will be done at night and at low traffic times in the next few weeks to avoid disruption.