August 8, 2023 |City of Lynn, City Services, Developments, From the Mayor, News, Op-ed

Op-Ed: Broadway Improvements Project

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On Tuesday, the City Council is scheduled to vote on approvals necessary to allow MassDOT to invest almost $6 million to significantly upgrade two of the most dangerous intersections in the City at Broadway and Jenness Street and Broadway and Euclid Avenue. These are critically needed and long overdue improvements that will benefit driver and pedestrian safety and the overall roadway infrastructure on a stretch that triggers nearly 30 car accidents per year.

The City has received several questions about this project. We have had many conversations with individual residents and wanted to share answers to the most common questions here.

The fountain can stay

There was never a plan that called for the removal of the fountain at Salvy the Florist’s location on Broadway. The business owner felt that he would need to pave the space that his fountain occupies if he lost street parking due to a bus stop in the plan (a stop which exists currently but where people have routinely parked). We were able to get the MBTA to consolidate that bus stop with another nearby, adding about six parking spaces in front of this valued business.

We have gotten public input and will welcome further input

The City held required public meetings in 2018 and 2021. Based on community feedback, we held an additional public meeting in June 2023. And we held another public meeting last Tuesday. That is in addition to the dozens of individual meetings and phone calls that our DPW, engineers and appraisers have had with the abutters. We have answered everyone’s questions as best we can and MassDOT, which ultimately is responsible for the design, has made modifications where they could. This process can be improved and we are certainly committed to doing so. With additional outreach over the last few months, we are confident that we have heard those affected.

In addition, the project will continue to receive input and implement detailed coordination with residents and businesses, particularly as the project proceeds and scheduling starts once the contractor is hired.

Coordinating with other infrastructure projects.

We recognize that the Lynnfield Street project will overlap with the Broadway Corridor project, and to an extent, the construction of the new Pickering Middle School. The engineers are well aware of this and have already started coordinating. There will of course be traffic impact due to the construction but everyone will work together and do their best to mitigate.

Ideally, the projects that will unfold over the next few years would have occurred  over the last few decades. They did not due to a lack of investment in infrastructure. So we are left to deal with the backlog. We can choose to manage the inconvenience and fix what’s needed now that we have the resources available, or we can again defer the maintenance. If we again defer, we will have to explain to future generations that we didn’t lack the resources, we lacked the will.

This is not to minimize the pain of slow-moving traffic during construction. However, it should be weighed against the pain of physical damage to our residents’ bodies and properties from a dangerous intersection that this project will address.

The intersection’s impact on surrounding streets.

The engineers that designed this project feel strongly based on their experience and analysis that the intersection improvements will improve throughput, which means that people will be less likely to want to bypass the intersection through side streets. It will still happen, so we are committed to addressing it through further neighborhood conversations. We are initiating a process to evaluate making one of the surrounding streets a one-way and are exploring the deployment of temporary speed humps to discourage cutting through side streets.

We will continue to work with residents and businesses affected to address the issues at this intersection. We urge the City Council to join us in working toward a solution to an intersection that is ranked in the state’s top 200 most dangerous.

As always my office is always available for any questions, comments, or concerns.

The above Op-Ed was submitted to us by Mayor Jared Nicholson’s office.