The use of free cash, or unrestricted funds from a previous fiscal year, means the city will not have to borrow money for roadwork.
The meat of the proposal concerns resurfacing 13 miles of roads in Pittsfield to the tune of $4.7 million. Commissioner of Public Utilities Ricardo Morales said the second-largest piece concerns the city’s sidewalks.
“For sidewalk repairs, we are proposing $1.5 million out of the $7.5 million," he said. "And at the moment, we are currently under a sidewalk project that was around that same amount of money that will still occur this year, through summer. And our goal with this approval tonight is to start finalizing the list and then bidding it out after finalizing the list on our on our side, which then we'll go to the councilors for review. We need to do something similar to what we did with the with the roads list.”
In addition to the $7.5 million in free cash, $1.3 million in state funding will cover the remainder of the city’s plans to improve its roadways in 2023.
The largest chunk of that spending concerns pedestrian safety in Pittsfield’s West Side neighborhood.
“Next we have the West Street mid-block crossing improvements," Morales continued. "This ties in with a very important work that we're pursuing in response to the community, in response as well to heightened importance for this intersection to be safer. And so, we are putting forward $500,000 to improve the crossing for pedestrians at this intersection, including other sections on West Street, between College Way and Valentine Road.”
In February, a Pittsfielder walking with a young child died after being struck by a motorist on West Street, prompting calls from community activists for the city to employ traffic calming measures on the thoroughfare.
“Some of the concepts that we're working on here is narrowing of the travel lane, reducing the distance pedestrians have to cross," said Morales. "Everyone can see this crosswalk here, creating some shared use paths. This shared use path at the moment is being proposed to go through from here all the way to Valentine Road.”
The plan also calls for lighting and signage to be installed at the crosswalks, though Morales noted those measures aren’t effective without others being taken.
“They do work when combined with other improvements to make people drive slower, and pay more attention to everyone else on the road,” he told the council.
Morales says $400,000 is budgeted for similar infrastructure improvements on Holmes Road by Dawes Avenue.
“We are proposing, again, narrowing the lanes down, eliminating the small shoulder there, increasing the number of crosswalks along the intersection, around the intersection, adding more signage," he said. "We're also expanding the sidewalk on the east side to go all the way to Malcolm [Avenue] as it's been requested by residents.”
The commissioner showed the council a diagram of another intersection to be addressed with a $200,000 portion of the spending package.
“Onota and Linden, the improvement essentially boils down to moving the stop bar here," said Morales. "That's the current location of the stop bar. Moving that stop bar to over here to create better visibility for vehicles navigating this intersection, especially on the southbound lane on Onota.”
The final $200,000 element will go toward crack sealing asphalt on city roads.
“Crack seal, for those that are not familiar with the concept, is filling the cracks on the asphalt to prevent moisture and water to get through and accelerate damage to the under the asphalt surface," Morales explained. "It is recommended to be done at the midlife of a road where cracks are starting to pop up and before they become worse with other distress levels.”
The council approved the plan unanimously.
