Great Barrington — Gina Hyams pulled into a familiar parking spot on Main Street when she hit the new granite curb and was shocked by a popped tire from a seemingly gentle hit. She took the car to Seward’s Tires in Great Barrington, and was told by workers there that this was just one incident out of an average three to four per week since before the winter, when the Main Street Reconstruction Project – with its new curbs and bump outs — was completed. One Seward’s employee told Hyams that it wasn’t uncommon to see up to four in one day.
Hyams left the shop, having paid $150 to fix a tire, in disbelief that this was occurring so often with no action from the town. Posts on Facebook from as late as June 14 show similar agitation and many personal stories to accompany hers.
Joe Sokul, Head of the Department of Public Works for the town of Great Barrington, told the Edge he had received complaints about the new curbs, but did not elaborate. Right now, he said, nothing is being done to address the problem.
Town Manager Jennifer Tabakin said the curbs are the responsibility of MassDOT (Massachusetts Department of Transportation), the agency that initiated and oversaw the Main Street Construction project over the last year. Tabakin said the curbs installed on Main Street are “standard,” and used by MassDOT across the state.
Autobahn Service in Great Barrington told the Edge that they had been seeing a steady stream of several incidents a week. They added that if it had been slowing down, it was only because people who had already gotten a flat tire were learning not to make the same mistake twice.
Local resident Stephen Keith Sagarin complained to the Edge, “my wife gashed a brand new tire simply pulling the front end forward to the curb while parallel parking. This is a woman who has had exactly one ticket in 35 years of driving.”
Rachel Siegel, who recently shared a similar story on Facebook, said “the bump-outs are further out than they used to be so it’s hard to judge and the curb edges are really sharp.”
Tabakin said, as usual, fixing things cost money. “We have an estimate for what it would take to buffer all of the curbs, but it was very high estimate so the town is reluctant to spend it. The preferred way of addressing the issue is to monitor how [the curbs] are naturally getting buffered after a hardy winter and then determine what needs to be done, if anything, after that.”
At a Selectboard meeting last fall Sokul said the snowplows tend to file down the edges.
Tabakin said the town is “open to considering buffering particular spots,” especially the most troublesome ones.
