Great Barrington — In frustration over the safety of a key intersection and the intransigence of the state Department of Transportation, the town of Great Barrington will request a meeting of stakeholders and public officials in an effort to resolve the situation, which one selectboard member likened to “waiting for a death to occur.”
At issue is the intersection of Route 7 and the driveway leading to Monument Mountain Regional High School. The intersection has poor sight-lines for turning and is used daily by inexperienced drivers. It has been the scene of a number of crashes — none of them fatal — involving high school students trying to exit the campus.
Both the town and the Berkshire Hills Regional School District have for several years tried to get the state to install a full-fledged traffic signal to replace the blinking light system that currently exists, but MassDOT officials insist that the statistics do not demand a need for the change.
“We’ve gone around this block so many times,” said selectboard member Leigh Davis, who asked that the item be put on the agenda for last night’s board meeting. “It’s come to the point that we cannot wait for death to catapult us into making this decision.”
The catalyst for Davis’ plea was an accident on May 12 involving 16-year old Marcella Tenuta, who failed to yield while attempting to make a left turn onto Route 7 and collided with a northbound Jeep Cherokee. Neither was seriously injured but the crash sent the female driver of the Jeep to Fairview Hospital with a broken hand. The crash occurred shortly before noon on a Wednesday when the COVID-19 pandemic schedule called for school to be dismissed early.
See video below of last night’s Great Barrington selectboard meeting. Fast forward to 14:40 for the discussion of the dangerous intersection:
Davis read a statement from Marcella’s parents, Tom and Loretta Tenuta, who said their daughter “takes full responsibility,” but that the flashing sign advising a 35-mile-per-hour speed limit on Route 7 was not working. The Tenutas repeated Davis’ request for a working traffic signal during arrival and departure times for the high school.
“If not, we are guaranteed more accidents and we hope a fatal one does not have to be the price we pay for a traffic light,” they wrote. Click here to read the full statement.
At least two other accidents involving adolescents have occurred at that intersection in the last five years, both involving young drivers attempting to turn onto Route 7 southbound whose views of northbound motorists were obstructed by other vehicles. In February 2016, both drivers were uninjured when a northbound motorist veered off the road and struck a stop sign attempting to avoid a student who was trying to turn left onto Route 7 southbound.
About six weeks earlier, Maizy Hillman, an 18-year-old Monument senior, was making a left, southbound turn onto Route 7 when she hit a Toyota RAV 4 heading south. Maizy’s father Ben Hillman said another car in the southbound lane, waiting to turn into the school, blocked the Toyota from view as she made the turn.
Hillman said that while his daughter misjudged, she couldn’t see the other car coming. Click here to read a letter from MassDOT officials to Hillman and his wife Amy Rudnick.
MassDOT officials were asked to attend last night’s meeting to explain why the department thinks no full-fledged traffic signal is needed. Francisca R. Heming, the highway director for MassDOT’s District 1 office in Lenox, said the intersection does not meet the threshold for such a light.
Heming said Great Barrington installed dynamic speed signs and additional road markings with DOT help after the two incidents in 2016 and she pointed to the relatively low crash rate at the intersection, but selectboard member Ed Abrahams threw cold water on her statistics.
“Nearly 100% of those drivers are inexperienced,” Abrahams said. “The accidents per year are divided by 365 days for a building that’s only open 180 days a year and only busy 20 minutes a day, but they’re sticking with their numbers.”
Heming said MassDOT has suggested all along that a better solution would be for the high school driveway to be relocated to Monument Valley Road, where a traffic signal already exists at the intersection with Route 7. She insisted the expense of installing a full-fledged traffic signal, estimated at $250,000, was not a factor in MassDOT’s reluctance.
But Berkshire Hills Superintendent Peter Dillon told the selectboard a relocated new driveway would cost the district in the seven figures.
“When we last looked at the cost, it was to be over $1 million and that would likely need to be built into a bigger high school project and does not make sense to be a standalone project,” said Dillon, referring to ongoing efforts to gain support once again for a reconstruction of the aging high school.
Another improvement has been made at the suggestion of Great Barrington Police Chief Paul Storti, who advised the school district to relocate the high school drop-off point for buses and parents driving their kids to Monument to the parking lot of Muddy Brook Elementary School. While it did cut driveway traffic by roughly 100 vehicles per day, that measure, however, only reduces adult traffic on the driveway.
Police officers from the district’s three towns had also been directing traffic at the existing driveway intersection, but Storti said that, too, was a dangerous endeavor and that there had been several “near misses” involving vehicles and his officers.
Davis pointed to action taken in Lenox, where a Dec. 11, 2018, crash at the accident-plagued intersection of Route 7/20 and Hubbard Street claimed the life of a Pittsfield woman. After hearing pleas from residents, the Lenox selectboard worked with MassDOT to erect concrete barriers to close Hubbard Street to traffic from Route 7/20.
Heming said a new technology could be employed that might improve safety. While intersection conflict warning systems have not yet been deployed in Massachusetts, the system does show some promise.
Intersection conflict warning systems (ICWSs), according to the Federal Highway Administration, “are intended to reduce the frequency of crashes by alerting drivers to conflicting vehicle paths on adjacent approaches at unsignalized intersections. For two-lane at two-lane intersections, results showed significant reductions for total, fatal and injury, right-angle, and rear-end crashes.” The FHA says the results suggest that the ICWSs can be “cost-effective safety improvements.”
“We don’t want to put in unwarranted traffic signals,” explained MassDOT traffic engineer Patrick Tierney. “We don’t want to have that precedent.”
“If there is a death, will that warrant a traffic light?” Davis asked.
“Not necessarily,” Heming replied.
Davis made a motion for town manager Mark Pruhenski to arrange a meeting as soon as possible that includes members of the selectboard and the three town’s police departments, state representatives, MassDOT, and a representative from the governor’s office. It passed unanimously.
Dillon agreed that political pressure might get results. State Rep. William “Smitty” Pignatelli, D-Lenox, agreed and said he would help set up the meeting. Meanwhile, Pignatelli also suggested that a longer right-hand turning lane on Route 7 northbound might improve sightlines for the time being. Both Davis and Pignatelli agreed that the town could pursue both courses of action simultaneously.
