The project, targeted for the Spring Street/Salem Street intersection, has been a topic of community discussion since 2016.
Complete Streets project will bring safety upgrades for all modes including drivers, pedestrians, and bicyclists.
The City of Medford secured a $400,000 Complete Streets grant from the Massachusetts Department of Transportation for pedestrian, bicycle, and vehicle safety improvements in Haines Square, Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn announced today. At a press conference with MassDOT Secretary James Tesler and Medford’s State Delegation on Wednesday, Mayor Lungo-Koehn announced the grant which will allow the project to proceed earlier than anticipated, with work at the intersection of Spring Street and Salem Street potentially beginning as early as Spring/Summer 2022. The intersection, identified as a pedestrian crash cluster location and a priority project for the City of Medford’s Complete Streets program, has been a subject of ongoing community planning and discussion since 2016.
“Improvements to the Spring Street and Salem Street intersection have been a topic of community concern for a number of years, and a project that we were prepared to move forward on beginning this year,” Mayor Lungo-Koehn said. “Thanks to the advocacy of our State Delegation and the work of our state partners at MassDOT, this project was awarded the maximum possible grant funding that will allow us to proceed earlier than anticipated. Thank you to Secretary Tesler for making this project a priority for our community. Haines Square is one of Medford’s busiest business districts and a major connection between the City of Medford and surrounding communities, yet this critical intersection has been in dire need of traffic mitigation and safety improvements, that we will finally be able to bring to reality.”
The proposed project will deliver improvements for all modes in accordance with the City’s Complete Streets Program by providing safer pedestrian connections, particularly for school access, transit access, and persons with impaired mobility as well as reducing speeds and highlighting bicycle use by adding sharrows, signage, and bike-friendly drains.
The proposed infrastructure will address the safety issues by providing improved pavement surface, retro-reflective pavement markings, pedestrian signage with proper reflectivity, reducing complexity of the intersection, reducing curb radii, reducing crossing distances, an improved pedestrian refuge island, curb extensions, improved street lighting, additional linear feet of sidewalk, and ADA/AAB compliant ramps.
The City anticipates going out to bid for the project this winter. Based on prior community input and public process, the project is currently at 80 percent design, however additional public information sessions will be planned in the coming months to present final renderings and receive any remaining input from community stakeholders.
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