Town mulls two options to improve safety of infamous Main Street crosswalks

GREAT BARRINGTON — The town is considering a pair of options to remake downtown Great Barrington’s notoriously dangerous Main Street crosswalks.

At the April 11 selectboard meeting, the board listened to a presentation from BETA, a planning and engineering group based in Rhode Island, examining a pair of key downtown crosswalks and recommending safety improvements.

BETA had previously presented some concepts to the board in December 2020 in the aftermath of a string of mishaps at crosswalks over the preceding several years. This time BETA engineers narrowed their suggestions to two possibilities.

See CTSB video of the April 11 Great Barrington Selectboard meeting. The crosswalk presentation begins at 2:06:45:

The two crosswalks in question are at the intersection of Railroad Street and Main, and the so-called Rotary Way crosswalk that links the Rubiner’s building with the TD Bank building to the east. The Elm Street crosswalk and the Main Street crosswalk connecting Castle and Bridge streets are not factors because they’re both fully signaled.

BETA traffic engineer Tyler de Ruiter presented two options — one more extensive than the other. The first option, which is shorter-term, involves “redoing both crosswalks with a high-visibility imprint.”

That could include a brick surface pattern with striping and rapid-flashing beacons — essentially pedestrian signs with rectangular flashing lights that strobe when a button is pushed.

“They don’t require vehicles to stop,” de Ruiter said of the first option. “They draw attention to the crosswalk and the crosswalk sign. So this is basically keeping what you’ve got. The sidewalk and the ramps are the same and you’re really just adding emphasis to the crosswalks and then installing rapid-flashing beacons.”

The second option is more complicated and more expensive. Like the first, the second option has the flashing beacons, but it also includes median islands in the roadway where currently there is nothing more than a series of yellow lines of varying widths. In the case of the Railroad Street crosswalk, the median in option two would break up the 65-foot crosswalk, which is abnormally long.

Aside from the addition of the medians, which shortened the crosswalk sections by offering a pedestrian “refuge” halfway across, the major change in the second option involves the loss of a lane on a very brief section of Main Street southbound.

Currently, Main Street southbound begins to widen to two lanes after the Elm Street intersection. The second option would delay the widening to two lanes until Church Street — a possibility that did not exactly thrill board chair Steve Bannon.

“Explain to me the logic of creating a bottleneck,” Bannon said. “Main Street is a pain in the neck anyways … Why would we want to narrow it down?” 

De Ruiter disagreed with the notion that briefly delaying the widening of Main Street would cause a bottleneck, insisting that it is safer for pedestrians. A pedestrian crossing a four-lane road can encounter blind spots, increasing the likelihood of a mishap.

“So [four lanes] creates a hazard for these pedestrians where maybe they think traffic is stopping but actually somebody didn’t,” de Ruiter explained. “With one lane, that is a safer crossing for these pedestrians crossing southbound traffic.”

In response to a question from selectboard vice chair Leigh Davis, de Ruiter also said the second option would not affect the bicycle lane on the west side of Main Street. Davis added that she liked the idea of medians and of briefly narrowing the southbound portion of Main Street.

“Shrinking that distance is very important because I have seen two close calls with people walking and not seeing the blind spot and nearly hitting the second lane,” Davis said. “So I’m thankful that you have addressed that through this design.” 

Board member Eric Gabriel said he liked the idea of the traffic islands on Main Street, but “the narrowing down there makes me concerned.” Instead, he suggested in the long run it would make more sense to widen Main Street to four lanes northward, perhaps all the way to the Red Bridge.

Davis asked Department of Public Works Superintendent Sean VanDeusen how the town would pay for the options. VanDeusen said the money has already been included in his department’s paving budget for next year. If the budget is approved at town meeting in May, then the money will be available. VanDeusen later told The Edge the budget sets aside roughly $225,000 for option two.

In the last few years alone there have been several crosswalk incidents in South County. In May 2016, a motorist hit two women, an 11-month-old baby girl in a stroller, and a three-year-old girl as the group crossed Main Street in the crosswalk near the Railroad Street intersection.

In September 2015, a man in a motorized scooter sustained critical injuries when he was struck by a vehicle near a crosswalk just south of the Great Barrington Bagel shop. That crosswalk does have signs with light beacons on both sides of the road. In August 2019, a skateboarding teen suffered non-life-threatening injuries after he was hit by a car at the Railroad Street crosswalk. 

And in 2017 farther to the south in Sheffield, a beloved town woman was struck and killed in the Main Street crosswalk leading to the Bushnell Sage Library. The driver was later convicted of negligent homicide.