East Street Reconstruction Starting This Spring
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — East Street is planned to get more bumpy as construction looms for the street's redevelopment project.
The state Department of Transportation project will widen the corridor from the intersection of East and Lyman Street to the intersection of East and Merrill Road, including landscaping and pedestrian amenities. It aims to improve safety, accessibility, and aesthetics with minimum environmental impacts.
The $10 million project began with underground utility work that took longer than anticipated because of unexpected road bumps, such as an unknown abandoned sewer line and the removal of contaminated material.
J.H. Maxymillian plans to start work on the road in late March or early April. At the Pittsfield Economic Development Authority's meeting last week, MassDOT's resident engineer Kevin Moriarty explained the process of the reconstruction.
The contract with Maxymillian is through August 2028.
The entire drainage system is getting replaced and the road will begin to be widened with construction performing a full-depth excavation of the road.
Utility companies are working on transferring overhead lines to the other side of the road.
Moriarty explained how the road's will be changed.
"From Lyman Street to about Silver Lake, it's going to be a two-way, left-turn lane with a travel lane in each direction, two bike lanes, two sidewalks," Moriarty said. "Then from Silver Lake all the way through the project limits here at East and Merrill, there'll be a raised grass median, two travel lanes, two bike lanes, two sidewalks until you get here to Woodlawn. At Woodlawn Ave, on PEDA's side of the property, there'll be a 10-foot wide shared-use path that pretty much parallels the existing big parking lot over here."
Once construction starts, the plan is to keep the flow of traffic going.
"The goal is to always keep two lanes of traffic, or at least maintain traffic. If we have to shut down a part of the lane, it'll be controlled with detail officers doing or flaggers doing an alternating pattern," he said.
The pedestrian signal at Lyman Street will be moved to the east side of the street, Silver Lake Boulevard will be getting a pedestrian signal, and Woodlawn Avenue and eastern Merrill Road will be getting pedestrian and vehicle signal replacements.
"I think it's just going to be a huge, improvement. It's a lot of work, but to be able to market the William Stanley Park and give it the sort of access and that it deserves in order to improve the entire surrounding area of the park is going to be well worth the suffering," said Linda Clairmont.
Tags: MassDOT, road project,
