Three years after a fatal crash, an infamous intersection in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, has been overhauled to refocus on pedestrian safety. Ahead of a public tour of the new West Street infrastructure on Sunday - the World Day of Remembrance for those lost to traffic crashes - WAMC Berkshire Bureau Chief Josh Landes went to the site to speak with Berkshire Regional Planning Commission Senior Transportation Planner Nicholas Russo about the changes.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
Editor's note: This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Josh Landes: I'm standing right now in Dorothy Amos Park in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, with Nick Russo of the Berkshire Regional Planning Commission. Nick, we're talking today about this very unique traffic pattern location in Pittsfield. I hesitate to even call it an intersection, because until recently it was sort of the Wild West out here. But we're talking about West Street today at a unique turn into this dense residential neighborhood on the west side. Talk to us- As someone who thinks a lot about planning and about how people get around Pittsfield, what makes this a unique location in the city?
Nicholas Russo: Yeah, this intersection that we call a lot of times West and West Street because it's where Old West Street meets New West Street when they had to bend it around the railroad tracks back in the days when the railroad came through. It's this interesting junction where the traffic, the main traffic flow, is always turning. The main flow is going out west towards, say, BCC or the west side of Pittsfield. So when you're coming through here, you're almost always making- We always have to make a turn because it's a T intersection, but the main flow of traffic is always bending around that right turn to go towards downtown or to the left away from downtown. And up until very recently, it was just a stop sign, and I think everyone pretty much universally disliked that stop sign and how far back the traffic would queue. Especially during rush hour, it would go all the way under the railroad bridge sometimes.
Landes: It also is unique because it has these two pieces of hill both depositing into that, as you say, West and West intersection. Can you tell me about risks that pose to the community in Pittsfield, and even detail some of the really tragic outcomes of having a mere stop sign at this sort of crucial intersection?
Russo: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's like a bowl, right? Either come downhill from the west or the east into this this kind of catch area of the intersection, and people would just naturally speed up and follow the hill and coast down. It was a 25 mile per hour speed limit zone, but the speeds measured were always a lot higher than that. And this is a dense area. You have a large housing block here at the the apartment blocks over here, you've got the park on the other side of the street and residential neighborhoods coming all off either side of the street, so there's a lot going on in this small kind of bottleneck here that everyone would take to get into downtown or out of downtown. And that can lead to conflicts of people trying to cross the street, making turns, busses stopping, both school busses and public transit busses, so there was a a mix of everything in this bowl here, and it can lead to bad consequences in some cases.
Landes: And it did. I mean, there were at least two pedestrian fatalities [on West Street] in the last few years . As someone who used to walk through this this corridor on a regular basis when I lived on the west side, this was a risky place, and it proved fatal for some people.
Russo: Yeah, absolutely. The event that really catalyzed a community response to what we see today was a pedestrian crossing the street near the park where we're standing, and unfortunately, she did not survive, and her daughter was injured about three years ago, and that brought a lot of community members out, myself included. We walked this corridor, we called for change, and it's been gratifying to see the response and, relatively speaking, how fast the turnaround was. I mean, three years sounds like a long time, but for a project of of this scale and level of change, it was a very quick response, in in my opinion. And the city did more in the in the meantime to also test out how they could make the street safer before the permanent design was built this summer.
Landes: Now, looking at this this corridor we're talking about, this West and West intersection, it is so transformed from that lonely stop sign a few years ago. Looking over this, and obviously, having such an investment in this project as you've had for years now, tell us like what stands out to you about this design that's now in place. And can you really contrast that with how it used to be?
Russo: I think it's a perfect example of being able to transform what you have without having to be taking lands, without having to make huge sweeping urban renewal changes that you'd see back in the 50s and 60s. Like this this stretch of road here, in the before picture, the lanes were 15 plus feet wide, no bike facilities, crosswalks were just simple lines on the ground, and now using more or less the same footprint of that original street, you're able to have a canvas to work with, pretty much because 15 foot wide lanes are so extraordinarily wide, based compared to a standard 10.
Landes: And that invites speeding, right?
Russo: Exactly. Yeah, you have all this space to maneuver, you feel safer to go faster. It's just a natural human response. Not to say that people are being antisocial or aggressive. It's just you have the space to work with, so you're going to take it. And now the way that the street has been redesigned narrows that field of view, narrows that feeling when you're in these these lanes because you've got striping that's closer to you, you've got the bike lanes, you've got curbs and some curb extensions, things like that. So it helps to psychologically slow drivers and also physically with things like the raised crosswalks and now the traffic light that's at the big intersection.
Yeah, I want to draw attention to that. We often see resistance to things like lights being put in or rotaries being installed. The traffic lights at this intersection are the major, the real takeaway I think from this transformation. Again, a solitary stop sign and now a fully fledged, fully marked up intersection with the lights. Tell us from a design standpoint, from a design oriented towards pedestrian safety standpoint, how big is that?
Russo: If you picture the way it was before that stop sign, what actually happens when you try and cross the street? Say you start on one side, you basically have to cross four lanes of traffic that only have the stop sign to stop them. And say you've come to a stop. Do you need to then stop again for a pedestrian crossing the street? Have you done your job? If you've already stopped at the stop sign? If traffic is turning left off the street towards the crosswalk, which way are they going to go? Does the pedestrian have to stop? Does the car have to stop? It's it was more of a Wild West, like you mentioned, situation just with a lone stop sign. So now we've got a full traffic signal with the pedestrian cross lights. You push the button, you get the light to cross the street, the light turns red. So you feel you have that extra comfort in knowing that there's at least this full control of the entire intersection for when you cross. Of course, you always have to deal with rights on red, you have to be situationally aware. But I would say it's a lot more predictable and a lot more standardized for what people are used to on at this size of a junction compared to just a stop sign.
Landes: Pulling the camera back, looking at other parts of Pittsfield or really any smaller city like this where car traffic tends to have been the dominant subject of planning for so many decades, what does this accomplishment on West Street in Pittsfield tell us about those other efforts to make other intersections like this safer, more easy to navigate, and more equitable?
Russo: I think it provides just a great example to point to. This was a city-led project on a city-owned corridor. It mirrors work that was done on on Tyler Street, for instance, a few years prior when that street was reconstructed and I think people have been happy with the results there. These these types of streets, like Tyler Street, West Street, even Upper North Street and First Street where the roundabout was constructed, these kind of gateways into the city are perfect examples of how they can be retrofitted and rebuilt to be welcoming to every mode of transportation. And we want people to feel like they can get downtown and back to where they live or where they're working by any mode of transport they want to, whether it's driving, taking the bus, biking, walking, which I've done all of those on a regular basis. And I feel like we've made great strides in those other modes of transportation besides driving, feeling they've got a bigger seat at the table, so to speak. They've got a bigger piece of the pie, and not just fighting for for the crumbs like a a shoulder on the side of the road for a bike or just a dirt plot on the side of the road for a bus stop. We get to see more detail-oriented designs here. Just in the year 2026, there's been more work done nationally to provide the best practice examples that Pittsfield can now follow, and implement those on their on their main corridors here. So I think this is an exciting example of how the city has gone from before to after using some of these best practice examples that have been shown to work in other parts of the country too.
