Overview:
The town-owned portion of Main Street in Athol is scheduled to be repaved in August, with the project involving milling and resurfacing, rather than a full reconstruction of the roadway. The project is expected to take about a month to complete, and four parking spaces near downtown crosswalks will not be re-striped to allow motorists better visibility of pedestrians. The Montachusett Regional Transit Authority has also proposed relocating bus stops on Freedom Street, which would require the loss of one parking space.
ATHOL – The town-owner portion of Main Street is tentatively scheduled to be repaved in August, according to an update presented at a recent Downtown Vitality Committee meeting.
Department of Public Works Superintendent Paul Raskevitz said the latest information from the Massachusetts Department of Transportation indicates the project’s timeline remains dependent on the contractor’s schedule. The work will involve milling and resurfacing, rather than a full reconstruction of the roadway, from the Millers River bridge – the intersection of Main Street and Raymond Place – to the high school, a distance of approximately 2.1 miles.
“They will just be milling two inches out,” Raskevitz said at the June 9 meeting of the Downtown Vitality Committee. “It’s a quicker process, so it shouldn’t be much of a huge disruption.”
According to Raskevitz, that means that on average, two inches of the existing roadway surface will be removed with a milling machine. Some heavily rutted areas will require more than two inches of milling to reach a level, stable surface. After that, the area is swept, a tack coat of liquid asphalt is applied and then the replacement course of asphalt is applied and compacted. Raskevitz estimated the project could take about a month to complete.
Four parking spaces near downtown crosswalks will not be re-striped as part of the project “to allow motorists on Main Street to have better visibility of the pedestrians entering the crosswalks,” said Raskevitz, who added that the parking spots had previously been identified as hazardous, as they were too close to the crosswalks.
The committee also discussed a proposal from the Montachusett Regional Transit Authority (MART) to relocate bus stops currently on Freedom Street near the Ocean State Job Lot.
Raskevitz said the project would relocate the westbound stop to between Kimball-Cooke Insurance and the Masonic Lodge and the eastbound stop to in front of Hometown Harvest near the Dunbar Place intersection. He said the Masons have already granted permission for an overhang to be placed on their property at the proposed westbound stop while a permanent structure is built.
“They’ll (the MRTA) be able to increase traffic and stops to Hannaford, Walmart, Market Basket,” Raskevitz said. “They would eventually like to include pickups and dropoffs at Allen, Bigelow, and Riverbend when that project is done. So this is helping them streamline their pickups.”
He said the relocation of the bus stops would require the loss of one parking space to allow buses to safely pull in and out. The proposal is expected to go before the Selectboard on July 7.
Director of Planning and Community Development Eric Smith also updated the committee on plans for two downtown wayfinding signs.
“We got money allocated for two wayfinding signs last night,” Smith said.
The signs are based on a downtown branding design approved by the Selectboard more than a year ago. One would be installed near the bridge entering downtown from the west to welcome visitors to downtown Athol, while a second would be placed near the intersection of School and Main streets to help direct visitors to downtown parking areas.
Smith said the exact placement of the signs still needs to be finalized and he hopes the project can move forward before the end of the year.