BROCKTON TRAFFIC COMMISSION
Thursday, May 21st, 2026
6:00 P.M.
MINUTES
The Traffic held a Special Traffic Commission meeting via Zoom at 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, May 21st, 2026.
Present were Traffic Commission Members: Traffic Commissioner Captain Mark Porcaro, Deputy Fire Chief Joseph DePasquale, DPW Commissioner Patrick Hill, Retired Fire Chief Kenneth Galligan, Director Stephan Hooke, James Sweeney and Councillor Marlon Green, Councillor at Large Carla DaRosa, Jake Howlett CDM, Sharat Kalluri CDM and Jed Hrseko.
There being a proper quorum, the meeting was called to order by Traffic Commissioner Captain Porcaro at 6:03 p.m.
NEW BUSINESS
- TWO WAY CONVERSION
Requested by: DPW Commissioner Patrick Hill
Request/Issue: Requesting to make Belmont Street from Main St to Warren Avenue two way and Main Street from Belmont Street to Crescent Street two way.
Discussion: DPW Commissioner Patrick Hill stated that this whole thing came about with the Warren Ave two-way conversion that’s currently underway right now. I’ve had multiple discussions with several different people about making this change, and when Mayor Rodrigues took office, he was really excited about the initiative to do it. So I’ve been working on this for a few months. One of the big hang-ups that I had was whether or not I would have enough money within the project to get this complete, but the goal is to try to institute 2-way traffic on Belmont Street to tie into the new section of Warren Ave that’s going to be 2-way. So Belmont Street will be 2-way from Main Street to Warren Ave. and Main Street will be 2-way from Belmont Street to Crescent Street. This will, you know, the folks from CDM have put together a PowerPoint for tonight to show everybody what that looks like. We didn’t have an excessive amount of time, or really even enough time to run all the calculations, but we know that it’s going to be safe. We know that we have the equipment to install, so we don’t have any lead times or waiting times on that. I know that I can afford to do it through the project and honestly, I think this is going to be a good segue into the future project of converting Main Street into 2-way. That project is probably about 30 days away from being advertised, and that will be transitioning Main Street back to 2-way over the period of a few years. So that’s, I guess, the long and short of it. The PowerPoint will kind of show everybody what the travel lanes look like, what the signalization is going to look like, the data that they collected, and give you a little bit of a history as to why Warren Ave and Belmont Street were converted to one-way years ago, and why in the engineering world, the thought process behind that has changed. Jake Howlett from CDM Smith presented a PowerPoint of the project. He stated that I am a transportation engineer at CDM Smith. Today I’m joined by Sharat Kaluri as we present the proposed Belmont and Main Street two-way conversion project. So for today’s meeting, we’ll begin by providing some background and context for the project, discuss the project purpose and need, provide an overview of the project location and existing conditions, show and discuss the proposed design, as well as present the analysis results, discuss the potential impacts and risks of the project, and then have some time at the end to address any questions. So before we get into the specifics of the proposed project, we really wanted to provide some historical background for why this project is even being discussed in the first place. So this photo here shows Main Street looking north from Belmont Street, illustrating the project location as it was back in 1937. And in this picture, you can see that there actually was two-way traffic along Main Street back then. Now, Downtown Brockton was converted from two-way to one-way traffic back in 1974, when transportation planners really industry-wide pushed the idea that one-way traffic would slow vehicle speeds and provide better access. Over nearly 50 years later, that ideology is being reversed, and we’ve realized that one-way traffic actually increases vehicle speeds and reduces access and safety. Now, the City of Brockton has conducted several previous studies to analyze the feasibility of two-way traffic, including those from 1999, 2007, and most recently in 2020. And resulting from those previous, previous studies, the first effort by the city to convert downtown Brockton to two-way traffic began in 2025 with the construction of Warren Avenue, which, when complete, will convert Warren Avenue to two-way traffic between Belmont Street and Pleasant Street. So that brings us to the purpose and need of the project being discussed today, which involves converting both Belmont Street from Warren Avenue to Main Street and Main Street from Belmont Street to Crescent Street to two-way traffic. The goals are really twofold, which are to improve mobility and access to downtown Brockton and continue progressing towards converting the rest of downtown Brockton to two-way traffic. So now we want to focus in on the locations and existing conditions within the project area, starting with Belmont Street. So Belmont Street is approximately 36 feet wide from curb to curb and operates as a one-way street with traffic flowing in the eastbound direction. At its intersection with Main Street to the east, there are currently two left-turn lanes allowing traffic to turn north onto Main Street and a single right-turn lane allowing traffic to turn south onto Main Street. Belmont Street at its intersections with both Warren Avenue to the west and Main Street to the east have traffic signals, and in total there are 10 on-street parking stalls, all provided along the north side of Belmont Street. Now, Main Street has an approximate width of 42 feet from curb to curb. South of Belmont Street, it has two-way operation, providing a single travel lane in each direction, and north of Belmont Street it has one-way operation with all traffic traveling northbound via 2 travel lanes, and there is a right-turn pocket to allow for right turns onto Crescent Street. Main Street has 2 traffic signals at its intersections with both Belmont Street to the south and Crescent Street to the north, and in total there are 10 on-street parking stalls provided along both sides of Main Street within the project area, including 1 ADA parking stall just south of the intersection with Crescent Street. Crescent Street has an approximate width of 41 feet from curb to curb. But unlike both Belmont and Main Street, Crescent Street currently has two-way traffic operation. So in the eastbound direction, it allows for northbound right turns from Main Street, and the westbound direction allows for right turns onto Main Street heading northbound. Because Main Street is one-way northbound, Left turns out of Crescent Street are not permitted. There is a current traffic signal at the intersection of Crescent Street and Main Street, and there are a total of 16 on-street parking stalls between Main Street and Maple Avenue to the east on both sides. So we pulled crash data from the Mass DOT impact crash data platform for the most recent closed 3-year period from 2020 to 2022, and we identified 29 total crashes within the project area during that period. Most notably, there were 3 crashes that were the result of wrong-way driving along Main Street. One involved a vehicle traveling northbound on Main Street that collided head-on with a wrong-way vehicle traveling southbound on Main Street in between Belmont and Crescent Street. The second crash involved a driver turning left from Belmont Street onto Main Street that collided head-on with a wrong-way driver heading southbound on Main Street. And the other wrong-way collision involved a vehicle making a prohibited left turn from Crescent Street onto Main Street heading southbound that resulted in an opposite direction sideswipe collision with a vehicle that was stopped at the intersection of Main Street and Crescent Street. So all of that brings us to our proposed design, which really had 3 core objectives. The first was to maintain the existing curb-to-curb width to avoid widening, just to limit the scope of construction. We also wanted to maximize the reuse of the existing signal equipment already out there to limit cost. And lastly, and really most importantly, we wanted to incorporate new traffic signal phasing and timing that limits queue spillback to adjacent intersections and provides acceptable traffic operations. So the proposed design along Belmont Street retains but shifts the two eastbound travel lanes in order to accommodate an additional westbound travel lane. Now, this additional travel lane does require the removal of 5 on-street parking stalls, as shown in the image here. At the intersection of Belmont Street and Warren Ave, the proposed design would also require exchanging the existing 8-foot ped posts that are currently already out there with 10-foot signal posts with additional signal heads to serve the new westbound traffic. And additionally, the traffic signal controller would require modifications to implement new phasing and timings.
At the intersection of Belmont Street and Main Street in the eastbound direction, the proposed design retains existing— retains one existing left turn lane and provides a new shared left and right turn lane. In the northbound direction, the through lane is retained and there’s now an additional left turn pocket which was needed to minimize queue spillback upstream to the intersection of Main Street and Maple Street to the south. This new left-turn pocket does require the removal of 6 on-street parking stalls as shown here. And in the southbound direction, the proposed design incorporates a new through lane and right-turn pocket there. In order to accommodate the new southbound traffic at that intersection, the existing mast arm needs to be replaced with a new 25-foot mast arm. However, the city actually already possesses this 25-foot mast arm. But because the 25-foot mast arm does not provide enough length to actually span into that southbound travel lane, it’s not really ideal for southbound visibility. But to mitigate this, the design proposes a supplemental 10-foot signal post and additional signal heads for southbound traffic. Additionally, the existing signal controller will require modifications to change phasing and timings to accommodate that new southbound traffic. And the new signal equipment will include a glance field monitoring unit for signal communication and also implement new emergency vehicle preemption, which matches what is currently being installed along Warren Avenue. At the intersection of Main Street and Crescent Street, in the northbound direction, one through lane is retained. In order to accommodate a southbound travel lane, the existing right turn pocket was removed and was instead modified to a shared through right turn lane. To accommodate this right turn, one parking stall at the south side of Crescent Street is removed right there at the intersection. And in the westbound direction, the existing left turn lane is retained. The design provides an additional right turn pocket there, which will require the removal of 5 parking stalls along the north side of Crescent Street. In terms of signal equipment, the redesign will replace the existing traffic signal lenses and provide new backplates. Similar to the other intersections, the signal controller will also require modifications for this new southbound traffic to change phasing and timings, and will also include a new glance field monitoring unit and new emergency vehicle preemptions, again, to match what’s out there on Warren Avenue being installed now. So analysis of the proposed design was conducted in Synchro using the projected 2038 volumes from the 2020 BSC group study, which were then balanced with the 2030 volumes that were used to design and time Warren Avenue. Now, for the tight urban environment that really comprises the project area, the 2 main variables are delay, which is measured with level of service, and queue lengths to make sure that traffic doesn’t spill back upstream. Stream to an adjacent intersection and cause gridlock. So the Synchro analysis indicated acceptable traffic operations with the poorest level of service occurring at the intersection of Belmont Street and Warren Avenue in the afternoon peak period. And that had a level of service D, which translates to an estimated 35 to 55 seconds of delay. The level of service at all the other intersections in both the morning and afternoon peak periods operate above that. And in addition to this, the Synchro model indicated that all queues are maintained within the proposed storage links, so the queues don’t spill back to any adjacent intersections causing that gridlock. Before we wrap up, we did want to present some potential impacts and risks for the project. The proposed design does result in the removal of 17 total on-street parking stalls, and this is mainly due to the lack of widening and retaining that existing curb-to-curb width.
And retaining this existing curb-to-curb width also limits the heavy vehicle turn sweep paths at the intersections of Belmont at Main Street and Main Street at Crescent Street. And specifically, it’s the Belmont eastbound left turn and the northbound right turn onto Crescent Street from Main Street. Now, in addition to that, 25-foot mast arm at Belmont Street and Main Street is not ideal for southbound visibility. Again, this risk is mitigated with a supplemental post-mounted signal head. And lastly, the projected traffic volumes may not capture actual traffic pattern shifts after two-way conversion, both along Warren Avenue and Main Street. So to address this, we do recommend monitoring traffic volumes and adjusting signal phasing and timings after implementation to account for any variations between the project and real-world world traffic volumes. James Sweeney stated that he has a couple of questions. He stated so timing-wise on when this would be done is obviously dependent on when two-way on Warren Avenue gets completed. Do we have any timeline on that and then the timeline on this? DPW Commissioner Patrick Hill stated that this will be consistent with the final paving of two-way on Warren. As of today, based off of the utility issues that we’ve been running into, the projected timing for two-way on Warren, is sometime first, second week of July. That’s assuming that all of the private utility work is done. We’re being held up right now by, National Grid and by Crown Castle Communications and by Comcast. So they have made some movement in the past few weeks where they’ve been able to de-energize some of the older street lighting fixtures, and the poles have since been removed, but we are still waiting for them to de-energize additional poles, some additional traffic cabinets, and some wire moving from Verizon, Comcast, and Crown Castle. James Sweeney stated and I guess my next question would be, did any thought go into extending two-way to past Montello? I’m sure it’s probably a budget constraint, but just a thought. Was that at all involved? DPW Commissioner Patrick Hill stated when you say past Montello, what do you mean, Jim? James Sweeney stated that when you’re coming from Main Street headed east on Crescent you get to the bridge, to go straight would be a two-way if I’m not mistaken. DPW Commissioner Patrick Hill stated so you’re saying Crescent Street from Montello basically to the V? James Sweeney stated yea so if you get to the bridge, isn’t the bridge, under the bridge at that point a one-way? Of which DPW Commissioner Patrick Hill stated It is. James Sweeney stated that’s only a one-way until you get just past the post office essentially. DPW Commissioner Patrick Hill stated that’s one way all the way up to the split at School Street. James Sweeney stated so I was just wondering if that was a consideration, or is that possibly another step after this? DPW Commissioner Patrick Hill stated that I don’t know that that limit will be reached in the, in the raise project. So the raise project, which is how kind of how a lot of this started, was to convert the entire downtown to two-way. Looking at the corridor from Warren Ave all the way to Commercial Street, from Court Street all the way to White Ave. But I’m not 100% certain if that final section of Crescent Street is in it or not. Certainly we can look at it, but that project is going to be bid now for planning and design so over the next couple of years, that will be looked at, you know, the conversion, whether or not it’ll go one-way to two-way, the signalization with the timing and the preemption, and all of that stuff will be addressed. But I don’t suspect it’ll be going anytime soon. And there is no money left after this conversion in the Warren Ave project to do this work. James Sweeney stated that it just seems like our weakness with traffic is obviously east-west travel, and it seems like if that part was open, it would alleviate all of the routes. But yeah, just a question. Retired Fire Chief Galligan stated I just wanted to mention that Crescent Street thing again. I remember when Main Street was two-way, and the biggest problem between Crescent and Belmont was the backup of traffic on Main Street so that cars coming out of Crescent couldn’t take a left on Main. If Main Street stays one-way north, we should not have any traffic coming down to make it difficult for cars to come out of Crescent Street to take a left get in the right-hand lane to take a right to go up Belmont Street. So that was the big problem years ago when it was two-way, that that Main and Crescent Street, Main and Belmont, was really a bottleneck.
To follow up on what Jim said, that section of Crescent Street between Montello and School Street, traffic from the east side of the city coming up Crescent Street and must go up School Street, cross over Main Street and go up Frederick Douglass Avenue. So Frederick Douglass Avenue right now takes an awful lot of traffic from the east side of the city, and at the top of Frederick Douglass it was two lanes where you had to take a left on Warren Avenue. Under this proposal, when you get to the top of Frederick Douglass, you’re only going to have one lane that will be able to turn into Warren Avenue going south. It would appear that if that section of Crescent Street that you’re talking about between Montello and School Street, if that was allowed to be two-way, people coming from the east side of the city could come right up Crescent Street to Main, take a left, a right on Belmont Street, and go right out to Route 24. In my opinion, that would take a lot of traffic off of Frederick Douglass, and it would take a lot of congestion out of the intersection right in front of the new public safety building. So whether it could be done as part of this is beyond me, but truly that little piece on Crescent Street I think is going to play a major role in traffic trying to go from the east side of the city to the west side of the city. DPW Commissioner Patrick Hill stated that the only thing I’ll say about that, Ken, is that— and, and just thinking this through a little bit— is two-way traffic under those bridges will be problematic. It’s just simply unless we restrict it totally for trucks, because once you put those into 2 lanes, those trucks will no longer be able to straddle the center of the road without getting stuck. Retired Fire Chief Galligan stated wouldn’t it be like Centre Street and Court Street is now? James Sweeney stated that I think they’re lower. Retired Fire Chief Galligan stated I think Crescent Street is the highest bridge we got. DPW Commissioner Patrick Hill stated that It might be the highest, but I think, I think and I could be wrong. I think Crescent Street and Centre Street are narrower than Court Street. Retired Fire Chief Galligan stated that I just want to throw that out there for discussion because again, with two-way traffic on Warren Avenue, with the implementation of this bike lane that has been put in, we’ve actually, in my opinion, we’ve narrowed Warren Avenue from where it was when it was one-way. And now dumping two-way traffic on that street, when there’s a line of cars going north and a line of cars going south, there’s going to be virtually no room in the center of the road. They’re going to be very close together. And if a car stopped anywhere on that street under its present condition, you always had room to get around to the left to get— like, for example, a BAT bus that stops in front of the Boys and Girls Club. I came down Warren Avenue the other day, the BAT bus stopped, BAT bus was there. It was very tight trying to get around to the left side of that BAT bus to go down south of Warren Avenue. When this is converted to two-way, if BAT bus, for example, is allowed to stop in front of the Boys and Girls Club, there’s going to be no way anybody is going to get south. So with the narrowness of Warren Avenue, taking some of the traffic off of Warren Avenue by opening up Crescent Street between Montello and School, in my opinion, should be an alternative that is at least looked at and maybe thought about in the future or whatever. I just don’t know how much traffic is actually going to come up Crescent from Montello, but if it was open to under the bridge, I think we would get quite a bit of traffic coming from the east side of the city going west. But if that stays one way the way it is, even today you don’t see that much traffic coming west on Crescent between Montello and Main. I think Jim was right, it probably should be looked at. There may be some problems with it, or it might not be enough money involved, but it seems like it’s the last little piece of the puzzle that might get left out that at least should be talked about. DPW Commissioner Patrick Hill stated that it’s certainly part of the RAISE study. So all of these thoughts and suggestions through the public meeting process, because it has to go through a planning phase first, I guess, will be very, very important prior to getting into the design. Retired Fire Chief Galligan stated so on Belmont Street between Main and Warren Avenue, there would be no parking on either side of the street, correct? DPW Commissioner Patrick Hill stated correct. Retired Fire Chief Galligan stated and then on Crescent Street, in front of the garage on the north side of Crescent, would we take parking out of there also? DPW Commissioner Patrick Hill stated that I think there’s 2 spots that get lost there, or maybe 5 spots there and 2 spots on the other side of the street. Retired Fire Chief Galligan stated on the side towards Joe Angelo’s. DPW Commissioner Hill stated yes. Retired Fire Chief Galligan stated that I think there’s a loading zone or something in there too, but cars or trucks that make that right turn from Main into Crescent they’re going to be very close to those parking places in front of Joe Angelo. So I think you’re right, you’re going to have to lose a couple spots there.
Now what about Main Street south of Belmont? Would you lose parking down to the BAT bus lights? DPW Commissioner Patrick Hill stated yes. Retired Fire Chief Galligan stated so you would have two lanes going north. One would be the lane to go straight, and the middle lane would be the left turn to take a left into Belmont. DPW Commissioner Patrick Hill stated correct. Retired Fire Chief Galligan stated okay, now what about the traffic or the parking on the west side of Main Street from Belmont Street south to Wales Avenue? DPW Commissioner Patrick Hill stated that I think you lose 2 spaces. Jake Howlett from CDM Smith stated that those spaces are retained. The only spaces that are lost are on the east side. There’s 6 parking stalls that are removed. Retired Fire Chief Galligan stated and you know those places that may lose parking on the east side, they have parking behind their building of which DPW Commissioner Patrick Hill stated correct. Retired Fire Chief Galligan stated so even though they might lose some on-street parking on Main Street, there’s some other alternatives there. DPW Commissioner Patrick Hill stated yes. He further stated that I think that’s the biggest, the biggest give, I think, in this whole thing Ken, is going to be the loss of parking spaces, but the flow of traffic, I think, far outweighs that. Retired Fire Chief Galligan stated I agree, and I think this is long overdue, and I think this is a great start to opening up downtown because it’s been crazy for the last 30 years. Traffic Commissioner Porcaro stated that at some point, we should probably reach out to the parking authority because Many, if not most, of those spaces that could be lost belong to them. DPW Commissioner Patrick Hill stated that that will be my follow-up if this gets approved. Jed Hresko was presented and stated Brockton Bikes, but also Brockton Transportation Safety Coalition. I’m also currently in a Complete Street school that’s being run by Transportation for Massachusetts, and I’m also on the Commonwealth Bike Ped Board and some other boards. The short version is, I’m wondering why there’s no bike lane there. I think that you have maximized, the whole focus here is maximizing vehicle throughput. And I totally get it. I mean, I know many of you suffer phone calls and angry stuff about gridlock and the like. But unfortunately, or fortunately, the City of Brockton passed a Complete Streets ordinance in October of 2016, nearly 10 years ago. That states— I’ll just quote very short parts— to the maximum extent practical, Complete Streets design principles must be incorporated into all publicly and privately funded projects. All transportation infrastructure street design and construction projects involving city streets must adhere to Brockton’s Complete Streets ordinance. To paraphrase the ordinance, there’s a lot of talk about cyclists and pedestrians and maximizing their stuff, about reducing carbon footprint. There’s hardly any language about keeping vehicles moving or anything of that sort. I’m glad to hear that there’ll be a public hearing process, because the ordinance actually requires an exemption hearing if the city is going to divert from and I could forward all this to you, but if the city is going to divert from a Complete Streets principle in this design. I would also say, as a practical suggestion to this, it seems that implicitly it’s implied that the lanes on Belmont would be 12 feet wide, because if it’s going to be the same 36 feet and 3 lanes, whereas Mass DOT recommends 10 or 11 feet for vehicle calming on arterial roads within the state. So I would submit to you, if those lanes became 10 feet apiece, you would have space for a one-way bike lane or wider sidewalks, what have you. But it would, would calm the traffic. Or even with 11-foot lanes, you might be able to squeeze something out in the shadow lane. That’s an unofficial lane. I do think a plus side of this is, as you know, the Traffic Commission heard from the owner of the pawn shop, and you have vehicles hitting that corner coming from Belmont going eastbound and hitting Main Street. So this would certainly mitigate that problem, and I think that’s something they’d be willing to accept in exchange for the parking spaces of not, not having their building get hit here. So I guess, in the upcoming hearing process, maybe there’s some other things that we can work out, like, or trading concessions or compromises such as a bike lane on Frederick Douglass. That would achieve some of the purposes here of being able to go across town on a bike or other two-wheel thing. So again, that’s my main issue, is that Brockton has an ordinance on the books. It’s generally not following it. The ordinance clearly says that it’s a complete streets, a routine part of everyday operations. Every transportation project. So that’s how we’re going to approach the upcoming hearings and other practices in the City of Brockton. DPW Commissioner Patrick Hill stated can I just comment on that real quick too? Just so that we’re all clear. This was not a plan for the Warren Ave two-way conversion. That this additional work has only come about in the past several months. So the goal is not to try to get around any kind of Complete Streets rules and regs. In fact, you know, the Warren Ave project, the two-way conversion project, we actually received a Complete Streets grant to accommodate a lot of that bike traffic. And in the RAISE grant, as we move through that process, this intersection and this equipment and these portions of these streets that we’re talking about this evening will be looked at in depth. And they will fall under the Complete Streets program, and we will likely be adding bike lanes and more pedestrian accommodations. This is kind of a last-minute thing to try to stimulate a little bit of interest in the future project. This is one of the primary projects on the mayor’s agenda. He really would like to see this. He thinks this is going to have a big impact on the downtown, and I agree. But it’s certainly not to ignore any commitments that we’ve made to the state or Complete Streets or to the cyclists in the city. We will figure that stuff out. It will just be in the next phase of the project. Councillor Green asked if you have any sense Commissioner, on the timeline for the next phase of the project where all these things, you know, relative to bike lane and different measures would be incorporated on a larger scale. DPW Commissioner Patrick Hill stated that so the design and the planning and design phase through the RAISE grant process, I suspect, will take 18, maybe 24 months to get through. The first focus of that project will be to take a general outlook of you know, the streets, but to really focus primarily in the beginning on working on getting Main Street back to a 2-way conversion. And then we’re going to try to get it in a manner that anything between Main and Warren Ave that we know will be adjusted in Main Street itself. Will be kind of like the first phase of construction. So we’re really hoping to move that a little bit quicker, but I don’t suspect you’ll see any construction per se work on Main Street or in the westbound corridor between Court and Belmont Street for probably a couple of years. Councillor Green stated just to kind of probe a little bit more on that point regarding the bike lane. So you’re going to understand that you’re going to take a more comprehensive look at that in the other second phase. Are there any accommodations or any interventions relative to that that could be incorporated in this first phase, or does it make sense to incorporate anything to any degree in this first phase? DPW Commissioner Patrick Hill stated that the reality of that is, Councilor, to try to keep the timing consistent with the two-way conversion on Warren Avenue, we were even questioning whether or not we’d be able to get this done. This primarily is a mill and pave and paint basically project with a couple of upgrades to some of the traffic equipment. If we did not have on hand a 25-foot mast arm to put in the intersection of Main and Belmont Street, I don’t know that this project would have gone forward. We were fortunate to have the right things at the right time. When you get involved in an extensive design beyond what we’ve done, because this is certainly something that was done very quickly. It’s an extensive design would have had all new traffic signalization equipment, it would have had all new pedestrian lights. It would have had bike lanes to be consistent with the Complete Streets stuff, because the RAISE project is being managed— even though it’s being managed by the city, is being overseen by Mass DOT. So we partnered with them to complete the next phase of work. So we know that all this stuff will happen in the future. We were able to kind of get this done quickly and financially it wasn’t a huge expense. And the fact that we were able to kind of carry that cost in with the existing appropriation that we had for Warren Ave was it was very fortunate and kind of a win-win to get this moving. But this is not what you see or what you’ll get out of this, it will not be the final product.
Deputy Joseph DePasquale stated that he had a quick question for Commissioner Hill. Does this have to go out to bid or are you able to retain the current contractor? Of which DPW Commissioner Patrick Hill stated no, so we’ll be using the existing contractor, the existing paving contractor through the Warren Ave contract. So we didn’t have to rebid it. It’s consistent with the financial side of a change order. We did not go over the threshold, so it just all happened to fit very, very well. Traffic Commissioner Porcaro stated Commissioner Hill, what do you want to happen next as far as tonight’s hearing in the Traffic Commission? You want another hearing with an update, or what would you like to see happen? DPW Commissioner Patrick Hill stated that I would like this design as shown to be approved. I think that this corridor and the new corridor on Warren Ave will benefit from this. I think that changing this traffic pattern will get more constituents and people visiting the city used to a traffic pattern. I think that is going to greatly benefit the city. I would like to make a motion to approve this design as it’s presented, which would be changing Main Street from Belmont Street to Crescent Street to two-way traffic both north and south, and changing Belmont Street from Warren Ave to Main Street to two-way traffic. James Sweeney stated so on the motion, so what Retired Fire Chief Galligan and I had brought up so if that’s a possibility to change, would this come back with an extension on that if it was possible, or is this— would this be moving forward and we won’t see it again? DPW Commissioner Patrick Hill stated that I would say that if anything changes on this project in the next phase of work, that it’s going to be all be brought back anyway. So if there’s additional bike lanes installed, that’s going to have to be brought back. Any changes to this corridor as designed, it would be a requirement for us to bring it back to the Commission anyway.
VOTED: TO APPROVE THE TWO WAY CONVERSION AS PRESENTED.
Upon duly motion made by DPW Commissioner Patrick Hill, seconded by Deputy Fire Chief DePasquale. Roll call vote as follows: Councilor DeRosa? Yes. Deputy Chief DiPasquale? Yes. Retired Chief Gallagher? Yes. Councilor Green. No. Commissioner Hill? Yes. Director Hooke? Mr. Sweeney? Yes and myself, Captain Porcaro, is a yes. That’s 7 yeses and 1 no. The Motion passes. 7 in the affirmative and 1 in the negative.
Motion was made by DPW Commissioner Patrick Hill, seconded by Deputy Fire Chief DePasquale, to adjourn the meeting. All were in favor. Meeting adjourned at 6:49 p.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Michelle Yaffe
Michelle Yaffe
Secretary to the Traffic Commission