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No adverse impacts observed from traffic pattern changes on State Street

 Barrels are being used to narrow State Street to one lane in both directions as traffic approaches the Central Library.  This is being used to observe the impact of making permanent safety improvements to the area where  pedestrians have been killed while attempting to cross the street in the middle of the block.
Paul Tuthill
/
WAMC
Barrels are being used to narrow State Street to one lane in both directions as traffic approaches the Central Library. This is being used to observe the impact of making permanent safety improvements to the area where pedestrians have been killed while attempting to cross the street in the middle of the block.

Study continues of possible pedestrian safety improvements

It has been two months since orange barrels, traffic cones, and signs were put in place to create a new traffic pattern on a busy and dangerous block of State Street in the Metro Center of Springfield, Massachusetts.

The idea is to force drivers to reduce their speed as they travel past the Central Library. It is a spot where people have been killed while attempting to cross the street in the middle of the block.

Pedestrian safety advocates, residents, and elected officials have clamored for years for changes.

Before making permanent safety improvements however, city officials wanted to create a mock-up to study the impact on traffic flow.

WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief Paul Tuthill got an update on the project from Springfield DPW Director Chris Cignoli.

Paul Tuthill is WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief. He’s been covering news, everything from politics and government corruption to natural disasters and the arts, in western Massachusetts since 2007. Before joining WAMC, Paul was a reporter and anchor at WRKO in Boston. He was news director for more than a decade at WTAG in Worcester. Paul has won more than two dozen Associated Press Broadcast Awards. He won an Edward R. Murrow award for reporting on veterans’ healthcare for WAMC in 2011. Born and raised in western New York, Paul did his first radio reporting while he was a student at the University of Rochester.