By MARK SARDELLA
WAKEFIELD – The town’s foremost experts on public safety, Police Chief Steven Skory and Fire Chief Michael Sullivan, both have fundamental problems with the bike lane flex posts on North Avenue and the narrowed vehicle travel lanes that resulted from the creation of the new northbound bicycle lane.
The two chiefs were asked to come before the Town Council Monday night to give their opinions on the flex posts and the redesign of North Avenue.
“We’ve taken too much travel lane away from vehicular traffic,” Chief Skory said last night. He recommended shrinking the bicycle lane and eliminating the buffer zone in order to restore wider vehicle travel lanes. He also called the flex posts “a distraction” for motorists.
Chief Sullivan agreed that the vehicle travel lanes are now too narrow, adding that it’s a particular problem for trucks, especially delivery trucks. There’s no room for cars to get around a stopped delivery truck without going into the opposite travel lane, he said.
Sullivan also noted that when the flex posts are in place, there is no way for cars to get out of the way of emergency vehicles. He said that he was “not in favor of the poles.”
Last June, the Town Council voted 4-3 for the North Avenue redesign that resulted in the creation of a five-foot wide northbound bike lane, plus a three-foot wide buffer zone between the vehicular travel lane and the bike lane. The June decision included the placement of “flex posts” approximately every 40 feet as a visual barrier between the automobile travel lane and the bike lane. The result was a reduction of the vehicle travel lanes to a width of just 11.5 feet in each direction.
The original plan was to have the road restriped and the flex posts installed earlier in the fall to provide an opportunity for the public to experience the redesign. But for various reasons, the roadway re-striping and the installation of the flex posts were delayed until early December. The flex posts were removed for the winter on Dec. 17.
At the December Town Council meeting, Councilor Edward Dombroski insisted that the narrowed lanes and flex posts create problems for emergency vehicles and cited what he called “an absolute disaster” during the Holiday Farmer’s Market at Hall Park when one of the flex posts was hit by a car and ended up in the vehicle travel lane, forcing cars to swerve around it or run over it.
At Monday’s meeting, Town Councilor John Carney said he agreed with the chiefs that the vehicle travel lanes on North Avenue are now too narrow. He said that even if the narrowed lanes slow traffic on North Avenue, it only sends more traffic to Main Street and Lowell Street as drivers follow GPS.
“We are affecting a lot more than bicyclists,” Carney said. “What good is a bike path that goes one–quarter of the way around the Lake?”
Councilor Jonathan Chines asked Skory and Sullivan if there had been any reported accidents or delays in emergency response time in the two weeks that the flex posts were up in December. The chiefs said that they were not aware of any.
Chines added that he would like to see data on traffic speeds.
Town Councilor Robert Vincent said that he would not be voting to re-install the flex posts in the spring, since there are no current plans to extend the bike lane under the Route 95 overpass into Reading and there is no money to create a Main Street bike lane any time soon. Due to that lack of connectivity, Vincent said that he would not support bringing back the flex posts on North Avenue.
Councilor Douglas Butler said that it was “disingenuous” to measure the effectiveness of the flex posts during a short period in December. He recommended seeing how they work in the spring.
During public participation at the start of Monday night’s meeting, Humphrey Street resident John Crisley spoke in favor of the North Avenue bike lane and flex posts. He said that the new North Avenue design was vetted by engineers at the Massachusetts Department of Transportation. He called the two-weeks that the flex posts were up in December “a botched roll-out.” Crisley is a member of “Safe Streets Wakefield,” a bicycle advocacy group. He has pulled papers to run for Town Council.
Kathleen Tuhy of 8 Wiley Place insisted that the brief December rollout of the flex posts was mishandled and no warning was given to the public.
“This plan was designed to fail,” she said.
THE LEADERS OF Wakefield’s public safety departments do not like North Avenue redesigned with a bike lane and flex posts. (File photo)
