Speakers labeled via automated voice-based diarization + AI name-matching against the city's official roster. Automated transcription can still mis-hear a name during fast speech (e.g. a rapid roll-call vote) -- clear near-misses are auto-corrected, but this is not manually verified line-by-line. Treat names as a strong best guess, not an official record. Home addresses that residents give are left out of this page.
[0:10] Ernie Marshallton: Good morning, I'm Ernie Marshallton from the Department of Transportation. I'm the project manager for DOT. We're here tonight to talk about the Great Village Transportation or Transformation Project and transportation. A lot going on here. We were here back in, I think, in March. Had a great turnout. Walked around the room. It was just basically an open house. A lot of you, hopefully, were here then. Got a chance to walk around and ask a lot of questions. So tonight, we're here to talk about the preliminary engineering. Engineering. You're not going to hear us talk a lot about crosswalks, sidewalks, trees, parking, or any of that stuff. We're going to be here to talk about the road itself, the alignment, up and down, vertical, horizontal, telling you about the interchanges that are going to change a little bit, signals that are going to be added through the corridor, a lot of change. We've got some new frontage connector roads as well to talk about tonight. So I think it's a lot of good for the area, help the traffic, especially help that safety cause to get through and hang out in town at the same time. So here with me this evening at Ray Hemp, Ray's here with HNTB, he's the designer that's working for Maine DOT, they're doing a lot of the design, they are doing the design for us. Dylan Burton is here with HNTB as well, my assistant Jeff Doyle, wherever he's hide and look back in the corner, he's project manager with Maine DOT. So with that, there's an information sheet out front where you signed in, hopefully you all had a chance to sign in, it's got a lot of the details of the project, a lot about what we're going to talk about tonight, third page, and how do you receive notice of this meeting tonight as well as a virtual public meeting. Good, so on this handout, on the, on the back third page is what we call a QR code. So if you have a smartphone, you hit that, you click that, it'll take you to a virtual public meeting which has all the information that we're going to present tonight as well as it gives you the opportunity to go on there and comment as well. We'll get your feedback tonight, but if you want to go home and watch that and provide comments, you can do the same thing online. The town is also recording this tonight, so you'll be able to watch that as well on their services. There's a couple links in there, one again to the virtual public meeting as well as to this project's web page on Maine DOT's website, it has all this information. On there as well, so there's plenty of places to go find it, plenty of places to comment. You know, basically you're doing us a help by being here tonight to talk over this project, hear your concerns, anything that we're aware of. I've got like three or four or five emails today that talked about issues out there, which is great. I don't live here, I live about an hour 15 minutes north. I don't come here often, not because I don't want to, but I just live too far away. So with that, there's also the agenda just talks about where we're going tonight. Basically Ray's going to get up, talk a little bit about the design, and then I'm going to get up, talk about the schedule, the funding, and what's next for this project, where do we go from tonight, and then we'll open the Q&A session. Basically raise your hand and we'll come to you with a mic, and just state your name, you know, are you a resident or your business owner, and then we'll go from there. So with that, I'm going to turn over to Ray and he'll walk down through design with you, Ernie, before we jump
[3:44] Speaker B (unidentified): in. I know there's a handful of town dignitaries, chairs here. Ian is here. I know you're on the
[3:51] Ernie Marshallton: council too, sir. Who wants to, who wants to steal this from me and go down through your council
[3:56] Xan Gas: Ann? Yes, and gas, what do you want? I'm sorry, introduce yourself. Yes, I serve in the council, yep,
[4:03] Annie Graham: and yeah, I'm Annie Graham, and state rep for Gray and North Yarmouth.
[4:21] Speaker B (unidentified): Do we miss anyone? Lauren? Oh,
[4:27] Lauren Ashland: I'm sorry, I'm Lauren Ashland, I'm the interim town manager.
[4:31] Ernie Marshallton: Okay. Is that everybody in? You got everybody? Make sure we capture everybody. All right. Thank you.
[4:38] Speaker B (unidentified): Awesome. So honestly, thank you, everyone. This is great that we get such a great turnout. So my goal tonight is just to give you a little overview of what this project is, some background on the location, the limits. And there's a lot of long papers on the wall, and welcome some great dialogue, you know, after with Q&A. Some of the PowerPoint you'll see, frankly, from your seats probably a little hard to see, and that's okay. I, we welcome your questions and we'll, we'll do the best we can to answer in a formal Q&A, and welcome a informal Q&A up in these role plots to give you as best as we can for feedback today. But as Ernie mentioned, this, we're at like 20, 25 percent complete, right? So this is, we're trying to set the Line and grade of the of the yellow line in the middle of the road. So I want to kind of that's my word of caution is we're not in final design at all. So you know tree discussion sidewalk type those sorts of things are not where we are yet. It's all about what does the road look like, where are we going, and does this meet what the town put together to frankly start this project with the state what three or four years ago. So without let's start with just the project location so I know this graphic Is a little hard from your seats, but this project encompasses a segment on US202. So Gray Road or portions of it are Main Street, right, and then there's a portion on Yarmouth Road on Route 115. There's a segment on Brown Street. There's a little bit on Shaker Road, and then there's there's these two little these two little new cells what we're gonna call is connector roads, and there's a lot of value to those, and bear with us so we'll we'll get into the explanation of why those are being proposed, but Those are part of the project. So specific details of location, so 202 starts at the turnpike ramps for northbound and goes well say is north or west I'm sorry east towards New Gloucester. It's about eight point eight miles, so up near Wayne half is where that limit is on 202. On Yarmouth Road it goes east towards New Gloucester or towards Pineland farms two-thirds of a mile, so point six eight miles or point six seven miles jumping ahead on me, so that's the portion on Yarmouth Road. On Portland Road, or 26-100, that's a pretty short little segment. It's only.17, and that's to facilitate the realignment of the intersections and to allow the new connector roads to come in on Portland Road. Center Road, there's a portion on Center Road that's a really short portion that's only like five, 550 feet. One thing to be clear on, and we'll get into the details here, we're actually proposing to dead end Center Road because there that's actually a high crash location where it connects with US 202 because of how folks go in and out of Center Road. So that those traffic will use those two new connector roads to access the town of the village center, and then we have the two new connector roads what I'll call Center Road connector, so that goes from 202 to Center, and that's about 200 250 feet, and that's That's just actually a one-way connector, so that's only allowing traffic essentially just after you get past the gas station. You could, you could access, if you, if you didn't have a destination, I'll say, in town, but you want to go to Yarmouth Road, for example, or I'm sorry, Portland Road, for example, you'd use these two new connector roads because that would allow you to bypass the downtown intersections. Same thing with the next segment being the Portland Road connector. That one is two-way because that allows the local traffic that lives on Center, both the handful of folks that live that segment, that 500 foot segment that's being dead-ended, but also folks that maybe even be coming from, window right, what is Dutton Hill Road, comes up Center Road, that want to come into town. Now they will be forced to take a right onto the new, this new connector road. So both of those actually bring a lot of value to the project because they, I'll say, they suck traffic out of the downtown intersections and make things more efficient. A couple other real quick segments is Shaker Road. There's a little bit of work on Shaker just to be able to allow the intersections to be realigned. Important piece here is we're not touching the monument. I know the monument has been moved a bunch of times in the past. We're not touching the monument with this project. It will get into a little bit of the landscaping there, but we're not, we're not getting into the monument itself. And then Brown Street likewise, we are we're, I'll say, snugging that, I'll say, a little bit closer to towards McDonald's to help the two intersections of Shaker and Brown Street come together, but they are, it most of those improvements are really associated with making the intersections more efficient. So I wanted to bring this picture just to bring some credence to a lot of this project. Although there's a lot of external pieces on 202 and on Yarmouth Road, there's a lot here relative to the downtown intersections, right, and bringing improvements to the village. And so why I wanted to just bring a snapshot of the existing condition is it's really unorthodox with all these different movements. And so like for example, coming from the turnpike coming into town, that's a left-hand turn technically From an intersection perspective, and that's really inefficient when it comes to how traffic moves through the intersection. And so what you'll see in the plans, either up on the, on the page or on the screen here in a minute, is we've actually found a way to, I'll say, realign things so the intersections work more efficiently while still bringing some of the inherent goals that the town asked for through the previous planning efforts in terms of active transportation, sidewalks, paths, et cetera. So a little history or background. This project started in, or when it got to DOT's hand in terms of project development, it concluded in November or December of 2024, where the town, with the department's support, completed the planning phase, I'll call it, of the gray village transformation, right? And so that created some recommendations for the department to proceed with in terms of how to bring some enhancements to the town and or the transportation infrastructure in the community. So we, six months later, we started preliminary design and worked with Ernie and the department team to advance actually putting lines on paper of what would the engineering look like to make this project real. We were here back last March. So many of you, I see some familiar faces that were here in March. We brought similar graphics and frankly what we're bringing to you tonight is a lot of the things that we said last time is real and we have a lot of confidence that the project has a lot of opportunity to bring things forward but so really when the department goes after funding from a federal perspective or even when they have to do the permitting themselves in a normal basis they have to establish a purpose and need like why are we doing this project and I we put this statement in the in the PowerPoint because it's really important for everyone to recognize there is a real need here right and why are we doing this way we wouldn't be here if there wasn't community support and a desire to bring this project forward and so yeah there are a lot of words here but the reality is that what this says is that the desire is focused on bringing transportation benefit increasing mobility and accessibility both from a vehicular perspective but also for active transportation so folks that want to walk around the community and bike around the community right and so understanding there's a balance between those different modes of transportation. So a little bit of the overview, and this speaks a little bit to the background. This is a complete redesign of 202 and in Yarmouth Road within the segments of the project. Sorry, keeps jumping on me. The clear improvements here are related to safety because there you'll see in a future slide there's a lot of historical safety challenges within the project area, right? So we're striving to improve those safety components. You know, one of the things we heard in March is speed's a real issue. The residents in the town recognize that folks are driving too fast through the corridor. And so we're trying to bring enhancements through geometry or how the roadway is configured to allow patrons allow patrons or commuters to actually drive a lot slower right and then that will improve safety in a great approach we're talking about how do we reduce the speeds bring in some traffic calming measures like so that you'll see on some of these graphics we have some raised center islands those are potential ideas to help I'll be like I'll say gateway treatments so these are ideas relative to making folks feel like they should be slowing down make it make them feel a little uncomfortable and that is the goal here right to slow people down and then enhance that balance between the vehicles and folks who are walking and biking through community a lot of blue and red dots on here I don't I don't folks I don't expect everyone to digest this other than the speak to there's a there's a real safety challenge within these different roadway segments within the project area and one of the department's real goals with any project that they do is improve safety and so we are sensitive to the idea that whatever we do has to bring safety to the forefront right and so we are cognizant of that and we want to bring improvements from an engineering perspective that improve and or balance these components one of other things that was noted in the planning study that is frankly inherent with any roadway improvement project is we have to deal with the water and frankly Constituents in town recognize that there's been a lot of challenges with water through, you know, historical challenges, and the planning efforts recognize that water is a real issue and that, frankly, this whole downtown kind of drains to the same area. And so the project will bring improvements to that and recognize that we will take care of it and bring it to a point where it's not really a roadway issue. It's going to be taken care of and placed in a place where folks on the road won't actually feel like they're dealing with it. One of the unique things with this, with this project, is these two, what I said earlier, these two new connector roads. So here just off the screen is the northbound ramps, meaning getting off the turnpike. Keep jumping, sorry about that. So northbound rounds are just off the screen. Here's the gas station. So first connector is from 202 down to Center Road, and then, and then the second piece is from Center Road down to Portland Road. These are meant to divert traffic out of the village intersections. There's actually, we found through, I'll say, traffic analysis and sensitivity analysis, that there's a significant benefit to pulling these two connectors into the project because it extracts that conflict that will allow things to operate far more efficiently. So like I said, there's a traffic component to this. So these two intersections will, actually three intersections or even four if you connect it back to the southbound ramps, all four are actually interconnected. And what that means in the traffic world is all the equipment talks to each other, and what the goal here is, we'll bring new or up-to-date equipment to all of these intersections with the refined geometry to allow things to operate far more efficiently to move traffic through, but with bringing the bike pedestrian components into the project as well. And so there's a safety aspect and there's an efficiency from a vehicular mobility perspective. They are all interconnected. So when I say interconnected, that means the ones at the turnpike for the, I'll say the northbound off-ramp intersection, these two village intersections will talk to the northbound on-ramps, and so there will be a communication with the equipment that things will work more efficiently. So bear with me for a second. We're just going to sit here and watch. These are simulations based on the traffic counts that our team has done in the past and then projecting that forward for what the proposed conditions could look like. So on the left is existing, and then on the right is what the proposed condition could look like. So this first page, or this first slide, is just how it looks like, and I'm sorry, these are all in the afternoon. So when you're coming home from work in the four to five hour type dynamic right the pm peak is what we would call it and we're jumping ahead to portland and yarmer so the first intersection of the two in the village similarly you'll see as things as traffic kind of flows through when you the big takeaway is you'll see a difference in magnitude of traffic on the left versus how efficiently things move on the right and i know folks think that these are just kind of voodoo traffic models behind the scene and i will say that there's a i'm actually local i live actually just over the town line and window i see the real the reality of the existing models and so i see what you folks deal with on a regular basis and so i actually believe what we're showing in the design side because i know what you see on the existing side i see it and i and i drive through it on a regular basis so now we're on slide three this is this is the second version of the intersection meaning pause and just go back to here, so this is the intersection adjacent to McDonald's, Brown Street and Shaker. I think the big takeaway is you see less cars backed up on the right as you do on the left. They're both afternoon circumstances in terms of, in there, the same type of traffic volumes, like we're taking the same traffic volumes and pushing them through the existing and a proposed configuration with design configurations, and so we have a lot of confidence that the way that we've adjusted things geometrically and with the changes to the intersection and the traffic signals, et cetera, that you'll see a lot of changes in how traffic moves through it. And bring safety into it from a, in terms of bike perspective. And so we're just gonna let this one play. This will pan through all three for a second. One of the big changes that may not be readily apparent when you see these different clips is instead of taking left at the first intersection, so when you're by the, I'll say the historic society or the fire truck, and you take that left to go, it's like if you're heading towards New Gloucester, now it's going to be a straight. That's a really big difference when it comes to traffic operations, in terms of the signals and how they operate. And so what we found for the traffic volumes and how the signals talk to each other is that movement is far more significant than the others, and even though, even though there's a lot of traffic on the other legs, the 202 movement, so from the cemetery to McDonald's or to Cumberland Farms, is the most significant movement. So if you make that a straight, that will be the most effective to move traffic through the collection of the two intersections, and so that's, that's what this shows. There's a lot of numbers here, and I don't expect everyone, and we can come back this when folks have questions. The real big takeaway from this is there's a significant reduction in time, and this is related to time saved, and so the right-hand two columns, everything in bold, is time saved during a p.m. afternoon, you know, driving through these intersections, so and we only provided a snapshot of these, but it's to give you a perspective of if you were sitting in rush hour and had to sit through one or two or three cycles of the intersection, how long would you have to wait, and this is the time saved between now and what it would be in the proposed condition. So we're, we're suggesting that there is a significant improvement based on the reconfiguration of the intersection and the connection of the traffic operations. So then just into the details of what you have in terms of the color plans that are on the wall and taped in front of you, I don't plan to get into every little weedsy detail, that's, that's the goal of chatting with you folks up at the wall. I pasted the legend here just for folks that haven't been to a DOT public meeting before, colors mean something, so like yellow, for example, that's where you're going to drive that, or that's the travel way, you know, green, for example, that's the landscaping or the grading that would be behind the sidewalk and or would tie into existing ground if you see red like red dots or red trees I that's a word of caution frankly we're at 20 percent right so it might show a tree being shown as being needing to be taken but it I want you to be cautious that 's a maybe really right we don't know yet but we'd rather identify it with what we know now have a discussion and understand how sensitive it is and then we figure out when we move forward all Right so 202, there'll be two pages to this slide. First is from the 90, of the turnpike ramps up to like where the town trail connects, for those who are familiar with that. So this is the first portion. The biggest or the most significant aspect of this is, like I said earlier, we're realigning 202 with prioritizing 202 through the intersections as the through movement. So when you come up from what I'll say is coming from the turnpike up to here, instead of it being coming up and then having to think left, that's gonna be a through movement. That's the one of the biggest changes, and that will allow the intersections to operate far more effectively. As you through the second intersection, you probably won't notice a lot of changes there really, other than the signal aspects. As you go north, like you're heading towards New Gloucester, it's really about adding sidewalks and the shoulders, rebuilding the roadway so it will look like a brand new road, those sorts of things. To tie things up, there are two or three crosswalks intermingled within this area to allow for the pedestrian component of this project. These are just example, I'll say what we call typical sections. These are slices through the road if you were to take a snapshot, just two examples to show you that what components are included with the project. So very early in design, but most of the project is including 11 foot lanes, three or four foot shoulders for 202 in this area, wide enough to accommodate the drainage needs and still including sidewalks to be able to have pedestrian access where appropriate. So like the top one for example, that's only from the intersection towards the turnpike, you know, like through the cemetery into the gas station area. But the bottom one there is where you're going through the intersection, you get multiple lanes, sidewalks on both sides. So it just shows the components of what the project includes. So when you, when you look at these two role plans that are hanging from the, you know, the council area here, you'll see those slices on the role plans. Those are what's describing what the different components are the project. Second half, so from the trail or for context will be like Colley Hill North. And so the northern end, or the right hand end of this picture, would be Wayne Avenue. That's where this project ends on 202. Again, it's 11 foot lanes, four or five foot shoulders as we progress out of town. And that's a function of trying to connect into an adjacent. So the department had a second project that is adjacent to this that is from Wayne Ave North. And so that project had five foot shoulders out of town. And so we're trying to transition from a village setting to more, I'll say, rural setting as you go out of town. One component is there sidewalks and or multi-use path, and that those were components that were brought up through the planning study. That are a portion of this to connect in with town already constructed or existing facilities. All right, jumping to Yarmouth Road. So those are here, right? So this Senate is Yarmouth Road. So Yarmouth Road improvements go from the intersection, they go east towards New Gloucester, towards Pylon Farms, two-thirds of a mile is the right landmark. About where the village, like if you're coming into town, there's the welcome to the village sign, right? That's where the project limit is on what will be the second slide here. Same thing as full depth reconstruction, so the completely brand new road, 11 foot lanes, 3 or 4 foot shoulders, depending on where we are within the segment of Yarmouth Road. And for the most part, will be sidewalks on both sides. So it will provide pedestrian or those connectivities throughout. And this is the second half, so that's the plot closest to Ernie. Same kind of concept. There are a couple of crosswalks to be able to provide connectivity left to right side of the road, as well as trying to find ways because one of the things we heard when we were here in March, speed is an issue, right? And so we're trying to find ways how can we slow people down. So there are ideas about traffic calming measures, whether it's island treatments, what some would call in the industry gateway treatments, which is really just trying to find a way to welcome people to the village. That's What we're trying to kind of implement to be able to bring folks as they come into town, that they really need to slow down. Portland Road is a relatively brief amount, it's like 500-ish feet. This is mostly to provide the reconfiguration to be able to support the intersection. And so at the intersection, we need to have three lanes, meaning two lanes into the intersection and one lane going away. Or like if you're heading towards Cumberland, the I'll say the project limits on Portland Road are really driven by where the new connector road ties in with Portland Road. And so that connector road is really important to the success of the two intersections. And so that is really the limit of where Portland Road improvements are, is really just about where can we find a reasonable tie-in point to accommodate that connector road. Likewise on Center Road, relatively brief improvements. We are dead ending Center Road. So if there are folks that live on Center within this 300 foot section, we'd love to talk with you. But the key here is that little segment here is you have to go away from town for a couple hundred feet and kind of do a u-turn and you're gonna go down the second connector, jump onto Portland Road, and then come into town. The real important piece here is that it's a safety aspect and it's a function of getting that traffic out of the intersection. We believe strongly that these are components that are really strong or bring big value to the success of these two intersections based on the historical safety challenges that have been present and the fact that there's a operational or mobility challenge currently out there in terms of how good traffic moves through the intersection. And so this is a little bit of a blow up of that connector road. So the connector roads of that what is second from the right color plan over there, each of the two connectors, first one. So the key here is this Center Road connector, meaning from the gas station to Center, that's actually only a one-way connector road. So it means that you can only go from 202 to Center Road. Folks coming from Center can't go towards Windom, up the connector, and then go west. It's only meant to get folks out of the intersection, either to go into the U-turn down Center, like if they're going towards Windom, or to jump across and go towards Portland Road. All of this is related to getting traffic out of the intersections in the village, and that, and there is real value there in terms of moving traffic through and, frankly, providing a much safer connection for these collection of intersections. And then here's the second, the second half of the, of the two connectors. So this is what we're calling the Portland Road connector. So it goes from Center Road to 26, 100, or Portland Road, and allows, this one is two-way, right, so if you're coming out of, I'll say towards or from Cumberland, and you wanted to go down Center Road, you could take a left and go down this connector road and go towards Wyndham down center, or vice versa, if you want to go out and take a right from Wynton up, you know, that way you can. So provides opportunity to a travel. We are intentionally trying to keep these two connector roads very small or very narrow to try to limit the impacts, so it's primarily for, I'll say, passenger car, or I'll say like box truck style or size vehicles right, to get that, because that's the predominant set of vehicles, and that will get them out of the intersections. You know, big trucks, yes, they probably will still need to go through the intersection, but otherwise regular, you know, passenger cars that we all drive every day would likely go through these connectors fine. Oh, it's very small, it's it's six or seven percent. Yep, total volume we're talking like 10,000 vehicles a day, AADT, so it's a big number in terms of overall traffic that goes like that number is for like US 202, and just to give an anecdote there, that's why I appreciate that, Ernie, because that brings some level of perspective of what we're dealing with in terms of traffic. The bulk of this traffic is regular, you know, passenger car vehicles that are going through the intersection. Yes, there are trucks, both big and medium sized trucks, but it's not your predominant traffic for sure. And to close the loop, minor improvements on Shaker Road, I think I said this earlier, we're not touching the monument, right, a little bit, a little bit of improvements to realign to bring it more in line with Brown Street, because we're trying to make that intersection more effective. But so all that means is we're kind of snugging it as close as we can to the monument without cutting the monument. Generally speaking, you won't see a lot of differences in what that road, what that portion of improvements are on Shaker Road. It's two or three hundred feet to just kind of tweak it over a little bit But that's really all, and then likewise on Brown. The biggest thing with Brown here is actually the Yarmouth Road end, where we're trying to discourage the cut through traffic. So we recognize that there's a lot of traffic that will cut through Brown either to go through on to Shaker, or we'll try to go through and then bang a right towards New Gloucester. The purpose there is to try to allow this area to, because the town's vision here that was passed on to the department was this is an area that can be enhanced from a village area perspective. And so if this becomes an urban street or a low speed area, much more walkable, etc., then and we get rid of most of that traffic, right, and it's just the folks that are destined to go either in that area or, you know, the folks that are, that are going to those businesses that are currently there, it's much easier to foresee an area where people will want to work walk there ride their bike there and then maybe landscaping and some form of village improvements could be made that come along with these improvements so that 's kind of the big idea here is so we're teeing up the intersection on the Yarmouth Road end by the church and with that sole purpose of trying to eliminate that cut through traffic and so the reality is most folks will come down Yarmouth all the way to the intersection and be forced to make a left or right at the signalized intersection instead of using Brown as a cut-through. And can we, can we jump, can we do Q&A little bit after? Thank you. Thank you though, I'm almost done, so I promise wrapping up. So call it Tully Hill is on the north end of 202 in terms of project area, very minor improvements here. We're similarly, we're snugging it up or more teeing it up so it doesn't feel like it's such a free flow movement, really, because we're trying to improve that bicycle pedestrian opportunity as well. And so there's a crosswalk here, this is providing connectivity to the trail that is just off the screen to the left. And so that those are the types of improvements that are being included here. You want to jump in, battery's
[38:23] Ernie Marshallton: Dead. Yeah, my thanks. So when you when you look at this project, you know that, you know, I wrote down five things as five takeaways for this project. In reality, drainage improvements, the whole products getting underground drainage, it's it's archaic, it's got problems, so that's one. Second ones, 25 mile an hour speed limit throughout the project, 25 miles an hour. Patience, people, you're gonna have to get at some, okay, because it's going to have to slow down. And basically, the interconnected signals that Ray talked about, they're all going to communicate with each other, so when one goes green, the other one's going to go green on main line, so 202 essentially is going to be green at the same time. So you got turnpike, you got intersection Yarmouth and Shaker, those are all probably going to be green on main line at the same time, that's just going to be consistency. And then you have intersection realignments here and there, and then you have redistribution of traffic, right, that's going to help the whole cause. But the biggest change is that 25 mile an hour speed limit, you know, so that gives us options on Main Street as far as that road diet Ray mentioned. I don't anticipate we're going to put the old race crosswalks out there because that noisy detrimental, but there are other things we're going to do as we'll get into that next phase of this design. So just take all those into mind when we're talking about this project, five major components are going to make a big deal here, it's going to be a change. If you want to ride around the state, go to Wiscasset, you ever get down to Route One Wiscasset, don't recommend it because traffic really sucks, but I think the changes that we made there with the signals that interconnection improved it immensely from what it was before. The only hiccup is a train, you know, the train comes across the air two or three times a day, and that's where the traffic backs up, so our project was really perfect, just you know. So I think there's also downtown Hallowell, if you go to Hallowell, we revamped the downtown a little bit, kind of stayed the same but kind of didn't, we modified it, we added some elements in there to improve it. All grade buildings, same idea. Even at Gunquit Route 1, we went down there, lowered the speed limit down through Gunquit. Huge difference. It's the same thing. It might not be the same part of the state or same, you know, forensic identity of it, but it's going to be the same idea here. So all huge elements. What else did I have? So I think, you know, also we didn't really mention where this all dovetailed off. The town went through a study with principal group, so everything here is kind of dovetailed off what's in there with some slight modifications. As Ray said, one element we didn't talk about that we took out based off the open house that we had was a connector that comes across Brown to Yarmouth. There was a little connector in here that was proposed from the study based off the feedback that we got from the town and the local residents. There's a little pocket park here, obviously, that's probably more important to the community than another connection, so that got removed. So thank you for all those comments that got that removed. So with that, get into funding. So right now this is a tricky part of this project. It's gone through a lot of dynamics, as Ann knows, with the funding that's been in place, taken away, came back, opportunity taken away. So right now we're still proceeding with getting this ready for what we call a notice of financial obligation, which is a no-fault from the feds, which is a grant application process. That this is a perfect grant candidate because of the assumed value is much greater than DOT would actually put in the work plan to get constructed. You know, if I was to take a guess right now, you're looking at 40 million dollar project based off what you're looking at, just based off the inflation that's happened over the last six months. It's been crazy. Cost of fuel, cost of livings, all gone up as we're all feeling. So typically it was a 25 million dollar platform for that raise grant. So basically what we're all waiting for is that new reauthorization bill from our federal partners. What's, what's going to be in it? What programs going to be available? What's going to be, what's going to make this project, what's eligible for this type of project? We're all sitting out of right now. Obviously we have an election coming up, you know, let the dust settle on that, and then the legislature in the, in the senate and the congress will get back to work and hopefully conjure up Some sort of legislative bill that will give us guidance on where a platform such as this will go. So still up in the air, but right now we got funding to take us to that PDR. All right, so that dovetails on what's next. So the focus of tonight, as we've talked about, is just the pure alignment of the road. The biggest change, I think, is right here. 202 is really become that through lane today. It's kind of not, you kind of come up at an angle, stop, and then you take that left. This is pretty much going to be a straight shot. When everything goes green, it's going to be a straight shot. So that's probably the biggest change, other than the connector roads. The center road connectors from 202 and 100, those are the biggest other changes. But other than that, it's essentially on alignment, as I call, center of the road is pretty much on the center of the road in the after. So then you get down to the widths. So a lot of these widths have changed a little bit based off the modeling that HNTB is done, and that's shown in the models. One thing I have to apologize on, those models are not going to be online because they're too big. We can't get them to run within that platform. So I'll probably work with Kyle in the town to try to get them on a stick where maybe they can put them in here and run, and folks can come in and watch them on online here. So I apologize for that. So with that, other than that, we'll open the floor for Q A. So all I ask is just raise your hand and I'll come over the mic, just state your name, and while you're here the
[44:49] Lauren Ashland: one that's been sitting over here patiently. Good evening, my name is Bruce Woodard. I live on the Yarmouth Road. From the sounds of what you said, one of your desires is to move traffic off from Brown Road. Yes. Because right now, nobody comes down Yarmouth Road onto 100 and takes a right turn there. You all use Brown Road because of the congestion down at Yarmouth and 100. Yes. Yep. So you're taking away from us that opportunity to turn right going down Brown Road. Is the Yarmouth Road intersection into 100 going to be, is it going to be a turning lane there? Is actually there is, there is a right turn lane long
[45:35] Speaker B (unidentified): enough that the length is just stopping short of the church. So just, or I'll say differently, just after the church the right turn lane will open up, and from there all the way to the intersection will be a dedicated right turn to go
[45:50] Lauren Ashland: north. Good, thank you. Yeah, you're
[45:57] Ernie Marshallton: still gonna be able to take that right on to Brown it's just not gonna be a straight for you can still take that right
[46:06] Brad Fog: Brad Fog, local resident, along that same lines, when people come down to Yarmouth Road to make that right turn on to 202 and then an immediate left to go up to Shaker Road, will they be concerned with traffic that stopped at Shaker Road and Brown Road because right now I mean there's only you can get six or eight cars there now before they stop, I'm concerned about traffic that was going to have to come down Brown, excuse me, Yarmouth Road, take an immediate left and then an immediate I mean our immediate right and then an immediate left, they're going to have to cross over two lanes of traffic or a lane of traffic further obstructing that whole center intersection which is a mess now so
[47:00] Speaker B (unidentified): I appreciate that, the perspective of the concern, the goal here is that this gap actually will operate actually more efficiently than what you're used to today because of the bulk of the traffic is actually through, and so when the through movement gets flushed then there's less people sitting here, so when you're concerned of the right to then take a left, we actually are providing a dedicated left turn pocket to go up Shaker. And so there's...
[47:31] Tom Borrelli: You still turn right on Brown anyway.
[47:34] Speaker B (unidentified): Regular passenger cars absolutely can. So we're intentionally making it a little bit uncomfortable, right? So bigger trucks and, frankly, it needs to be slower speed, right? So we don't want people shooting down Brown at 40 miles an hour. So the whole goal here is to bring people to a slower speed and allow this area to be more village-oriented. And so, yes, this is going to be a little uncomfortable. If you feel like that's more efficient than coming down to here, you're still allowed to do so. You just have to come to a slower speed and take that right.
[48:11] Tom Borrelli: Plus you can take a right or left to
[48:17] Speaker B (unidentified): the library. Very much so, exactly.
[48:20] Brad Fog: But there's just a huge traffic coming up Portland, a huge traffic coming up 202 under that 200 feet, maybe 250 feet of road so
[48:36] Speaker B (unidentified): i very much appreciate where you're coming from with the realignment and making 202 the primary through movement that will flush and make this feel different i know it's really hard to accept but it today this is a left and so all of these different legs have to go independently it's really inefficient from a signal operations perspective where at least if we can make this movement free flow because that's where 70 percent of the traffic is on 202 going north and south or west east and west and so if we can push that through, then the other legs will move more effectively and you're going to have, you can
[49:18] Ernie Marshallton: explain it better, right, but you're going to have more green time on these signals on 202 that you do today because today they have to be juggled because of there's no synchronization out there. They're all fragmented, they're not talking to each other, so it's literally when this goes green that's green, when this goes red that goes red, but these side streets shorter green time they are in the
[49:44] Speaker B (unidentified): proposed condition because this is the predominant movement, right, so north and south or east and west on 202 is far more heavy volume of traffic, and so if we flush that with the green time and what Ernie's actually getting to is one of the challenges with today is each one of these legs has to go independently, what they call an exclusive phase from a traffic signal perspective. That's really inefficient where now if we can at least make the 202 movements concurrent, traffic is going to go through that a lot more effectively. And so taking that part out of the equation, then you'll see Portland Road and Yarmouth Road move more efficiently as well. And so when you saw those traffic simulations going, the right-hand side of those videos, yes, I know they look like they're very optimistic. The backups aren't nearly what they are today, and we do believe them, and part of what our obligation is to truth those based on field observations. And so one of the things Ernie has us do is we go out when we actually watch today's today's volumes truth what actually is out there to calibrate what we're putting in the models to make sure that when we do a proposed condition it's actually right or it's actually real, yes.
[51:05] Ernie Marshallton: Sir, I'm understanding your concerns because I've been at this for 25 years. It's probably taking me 24 four years to warm up to a traffic engineer.
[51:19] Brad Fog: It's not all well, it's
[51:24] Ernie Marshallton: None of those. You have an identity of your own here. And I think one thing that's going to happen to you when this gets done, it's you're going to pick the path of least resistance. Which way are you going to go? You're going to go down and I'll just stop talking after this, but the biggest thing here is speed from here to here year what 50 55 what do you think the speed is at this point today 50 45 it's not going to be 50 or 45 at this point and that's the biggest thing linked to the town's trying to get identity with their 30-year development so a lot of the changes with a multi-use path that you'll be seeing moving forward it's all connected to what the 30-year plan looks like hopefully it all Develops because it's all linked to what we're trying to do here to change things.
[52:20] Greg: Ken Farrington, Greg. As you know, Ken's cock here, towing. So I'm on these roads probably more than anybody here. Choking the town down, slowing things down, is just creating backup. If I do an accident at 730 in the morning on Route 100 or Route 26, it just puts a town in havoc. Like you get the right there behind in is you get that choked down to one lane that's just gonna back up route 100 Adam can you make that turn on to Brown Street I came here I came here 20 years ago and I said why don't you close Brown Street that'd be really nice and they said the distance from that light that light isn't long enough to let Adam Wilkinson towing an excavator set at that light and back it all up so that's probably not going to work either it all looks great but slowing choking Is just going to be a massive backup I moved here in 1973 it was two lanes on Main Street they opened it up because it was choked down and backed up Frank probably tell you she's been here forever so yeah so and it's a great idea I like it but I think a few things need to be changed thank you so
[53:53] Ernie Marshallton: One of the things that DOT has been doing over the last couple years is it's it's not so much the more efficiency like in these type of settings it's more about safety to some point your travel through there it could be a little bit slow it could be a little more inconvenient it's gonna be a heck of a lot safer so it's gonna to me it's a big improvement Kathy
[54:21] Tom Borrelli: Tom Borrelli I'm a resident and I own the house that's in the peninsula, the only house that's in that Peninsula. I rent it and I can attest that I have seen people try to cross the street in various forms that have almost gotten hit because the speeds. And I know it's inconvenient for businesses that operate towing or excavators, but I saw a nine-year-old where she's supposed to cross try to cross almost get hit. So it's it's just trying to competing interests and it but it has to slow down. It's 50 miles an hour is just way too fast going by the Congregational Church and areas where people are walking.
[55:07] Sam Fiefel: Sam Fiefel West Gray Ray, how do you envision people going from Center Road to the Turnpike?
[55:22] Speaker B (unidentified): Out to Portland Road.
[55:24] Sam Fiefel: So they would go up, out to Portland Road, and then come back through the intersection? Yes. Okay.
[55:31] Speaker B (unidentified): Yep. Because that is primarily driven by safety. Right. It is a high crash location, as DOT defines.
[55:41] Sam Fiefel: Yeah, no, that intersection sucks, definitely. But just so that instead of coming this way, they're going to go...
[55:47] Speaker B (unidentified): I'm a contributor to that. I live down what is now Dutton Hill Road on the Wyndham side of this, and I cut through taking a left into there. So this is eliminating that conflict, both right and left out of center, and that will bring substantial safety improvements.
[56:06] Sam Fiefel: And was there any look at cutting the corner from Yarmouth Road to Portland Road and getting them out of that intersection at all like a connector between those two between here
[56:18] Speaker B (unidentified): and here yeah there wasn't just based on the development yeah the impacts that would be created yep yeah
[56:30] Ernie Marshallton: i mean there was some things that we obviously looked at but there's some historical properties around that whole intersection which kind of restricts us so that was unfortunately i think we've done the best we can with what we have to work with because of
[56:43] Annie Graham: the historical integrity kristin town planner i just wanted to ask a quick point of clarification are you doing something to prevent people from taking the left-hand turn onto center like if they're heading toward the highway what they're used to doing now to be able to take a left onto center because you can take a right onto it coming off the highway but if you're heading toward the highway right now you can take a left but you're going to not have that movement that will be prohibited correct and how will it be prohibited i guess that it's going to be small frankly one
[57:19] Speaker B (unidentified): One of the deterrents is the road, that's a one-way connector, so it's going to be narrow enough. Frankly, it's going to feel uncomfortable to go the other way.
[57:28] Ernie Marshallton: See, I talk in radius, so here's 202 Main Turnpike. This center road connector comes up from 202 to center road here. It's one way, so it's really narrow for basically one car to go at one time. So we'll have to do something here to disallow that left-hand turn, which is what your concern is. And then to answer this gentleman's question, coming up center, headed toward 202, which you can't. You'll have to take a right on this connector road and head toward Portland Road over here and take that left to the signal.
[57:59] Brad Fog: Yes. Correct. A landmark question. How close is that to Dunn Motors or Dunn's auto parts? I mean, where's that road coming up? It's close. Yep.
[58:10] Ernie Marshallton: It's close. And that's one thing that we've got to navigate. Hopefully, those property owners are here tonight so we can at least start having some one-on-one conversations to show where those connector roads are going and what the impacts are.
[58:22] Speaker B (unidentified): It's further down the hill. Yeah. So it's not using that cut-through that locals use today? Go 200 feet down the hill, and then that's where the Portland is centered. So, Ernie, he's talking about the second connector. Yes. The auto parts store is just off the page where Ernie's fingers are. It's just closer to the intersection. Because today, frankly, I'm a culprit of this, that's a long driveway right through the auto parts area between center, right? And so I know a lot of folks do that. You're welcome.
[58:58] Speaker J (unidentified): I'm trying to understand, as you're coming into the village from Shaker Road, and you said you're going to kind of fix that a little bit, you know, take a little bit off the monument. But it's still gonna have to make a left-hand turn at those who need to take a left-hand chain to go over 100, so what happens is the cars behind you who want to go straight up Brown Street or elsewhere, they'll, they'll come right across and kind of block you, and then the traffic coming off Brown Street is stuck, and nobody knows where to go, and how is this all going to fix that kind of stuff that's going on, because that's where the accidents, causes the accidents in that little
[59:41] Speaker B (unidentified): Corner there, so one starting point there, I would say, is a big improvement, is those two intersections or those two roads are going to be far better aligned. So today they're actually not aligned very well. They're kind of, they're kind of cockeyed. And so with this improvement, with kind of snaking Shaker Road towards the monument, that brings it better alignment to Brown Street. And so with being directly across from each other, that will be better sight lines to be able to function more effectively. And it will be contiguous with the traffic operations so that folks will have a better sense of when they're supposed to go and when they're not.
[1:00:20] Ernie Marshallton: Supposed to go. Yeah, a lot of, a lot of it is the sight lines that Ray's talking about. How many time, how many in this room have had close calls at either one of these intersections of people just really, if you're asking me, driving's stupid. You know, one thing, our design guidance, and I always say this at every public meeting, so forgive me, we can't design for human behavior.
[1:00:45] Speaker B (unidentified): Can't fix stupid people.
[1:00:46] Ernie Marshallton: I got that on my desk, actually.
[1:00:49] Speaker K (unidentified): Okay, so my question, I don't want to be greedy because I'm pretty excited about how much work you're doing on Yarmouth Road, but I was wondering, Kristen, you know, how far away is that from Woodcock? Because you know we have just that is a beautiful new development with ball field, ball fields for the town, right, that are going to be used by the town. At the end it might be a nice idea to think about a sidewalk that can get kids from the center village to the ball field. Is it, is it, I can't, it's a terrible corner. Woodcock's a terrible corner. You're talking further towards.
[1:01:37] Ernie Marshallton: New Gloucester. I'm sorry for jumping on 115. You know, I would talk is in off the page down the armor like towards. Yeah, and I, and I'll say this, whenever you do projects like this, there's no good place to end them because wherever we end them there's like 20 questions. Well, how come you can't do this? How come? At some point you have to draw the line in the sand. It's going to become concrete, and then you work with the town to develop future projects to enhance what we've built. We're just gonna fix. This problem, push it somewhere else, is how I describe it. Thanks.
[1:02:24] Andy Bar Height: Andy Bar Height nuts in road. I have actually two things about how much of this is new roadway versus what exists, and we've talked a lot about the traffic studies from 202 going through the town, but what about the traffic that backs up on Portland Road, you know, especially at five o'clock going back towards the ice cream shop?
[1:02:49] Speaker B (unidentified): Yeah, so that was included. So I'm going to answer that second half, the traffic piece first. By fixing 202 first, or making that more efficient, Portland Road will be better, is actually the reality to this. It sounds counterintuitive, but the volume distribution is so heavily weighted towards US 202, from the turnpike towards New Gloucester, that if you make that the most efficient way possible, then Yarmouth and Portland Road will be dramatically better in the morning in the p.m. Conditions and so I feel very confident that you're gonna see a difference in and I actually believe these simulations those videos they might feel hokey they're real, you know, and we've done a lot of calibration on trying to tweak these to replicate what both the existing condition circumstances are and how we feel it's going to look like in the proposed condition, and so Portland Road will see dramatic improvement to second half of the question. I'm sorry, it's actually very little if anything From a new road or I'll say pavement perspective, you're actually getting more because of the added sidewalks or the added width for active transportation, so the added width might be, there's a little bit of added width, just a little bit on Yarmouth Road, right? We talked about that three-lane segment for the three or 400 feet from the church end. Same thing for Portland Road. It's not dramatic. If anything, it's a slight increase, but not significant.
[1:04:35] Dan McGuire: Dan McGuire, resident of Gray. The old fire station where the historical society is now, in earlier renditions there was a lot more space in front of that building than there is in this. I understand the idea of straightening it out and the through traffic. I'm gonna be curious to hear what's gonna come traffic down when people see that light has been green for a while and they're coming up from the turnpike and they hit that intersection at 40 miles an hour instead of 25. Coming that way, there's, there's green space on the Portland Road side of 202 there that you've looked like you're going to plant. It feels like you could put a bend in that isn't gonna be much of a bend, but leave a little bit more land in front of the Historical Society building. Right now, it looks like there's barely room for a sidewalk there.
[1:05:36] Speaker B (unidentified): So I would say, I'd recharacterize that a little. I would say that the sidewalk area in front of the Historical Society is about the same as it is today. Which is horrible. Hey, well. It's horrible. So I'm all for it. Maybe a slight re-play. The width will be the same. There'll be ADA compliant, and one of the things we're adding is just beyond the fire truck bay, we'll be adding a crosswalk. So we're formalizing safe sidewalks from the fire station and, frankly, across the road.
[1:06:13] Dan McGuire: And I appreciate that. I just don't, looking at your layout here, see any sacrifice in leaving a little more land on that side of the road and bending it a little bit more on this side.
[1:06:25] Speaker B (unidentified): so ernie alluded to this earlier one of the challenges is we have to go through an environmental process there are historic properties littering the project footprint this parcel here this parcel here are the historic parcels i'm aware of that and so that creates a challenge from an engineering perspective in that we have to the maximum extent practical minimize the effect to those parts and so we are we are we are striking that balance
[1:06:54] Dan McGuire: between there. We could have a long discussion about practical, but thank you
[1:07:01] Ernie Marshallton: for listening to me. It's kind of like taking a bowling ball, throwing it through a keyhole. They don't fit, but I mean, that's, it's great comments, Dan. I mean, yeah, we took, we were there, we hear, you know, the beauty of that fire house is beauty, the house on the corner is beautiful, all those places are beautiful. So the intent is to try to build something to improve it and still make it look good. Thank
[1:07:29] Liz: you I live in one of those properties that live litter the village I appreciate my name is Liz I live on [street] I appreciate that you took out that road by the pocket park those headlights coming through would have shown right into my living room not that 's a big deal but a really bad idea to put a road there I wanted to ask about your data on trucks it seemed a little off your percentage we have an excavation guy here who could probably tell you how many times his trucks go through Gray wondering if a 25 mile an hour speed limit might minimize the number of gravel trucks that come through Gray. So it's wondering about your data. And then the other question I had, back when the principal group people were here, they talked about the signage. I know you guys are talking about the ground, not up above. But I would like to, if you have any insight on to changing the signage. Right now, it's highway signage, which makes people think they're on a highway. So they're not going to go 25. Speed oriented. Yep. Yep.
[1:08:45] Speaker B (unidentified): I would say, so first off, we're not certainly saying. So the simple answer is signage will be completely redone. We certainly appreciate when this is being completely reconfigured and we're trying to create a village environment, highway-oriented signage like you see near the turnpike is probably not what is commensurate with a village environment. So that is something we'll work with the department on. What does right look like? How do we, because it's a balance between, we, there's a need to convey the right message, right, we need to show motorists how to get through the pro, the study area, the project area, but we also, we don't want to violate the goals of the town and, you know, the village theme, right, or the vision. So it's both. We can get you the more the finite date details. I can tell you that the data is based on historicals, right, and then we will project that forward. Is the industry standard one
[1:10:18] Ernie Marshallton: thing that I learned, and you'll know why when I hand this mic off, is out 115 is how many gravel pits are out there. Anyway, I was enlightened when someone told me that. I'm like, so when you're talking construction equipment, that's not going away. So now I'll hand the mic off
[1:10:49] Adam: Adam. Madam Wilkinson, I had a couple questions first before I added some commentary. Coming up 202 into that first, the major intersection that's going to get realigned, trucks right now have a hard time navigating the right-hand turn to go south on Portland Road. They're running up on the curbs all the time. Now, with the realignment, that's going to actually be a sharper angle than it is now. I'm assuming you guys have taken into account a little bit more turning radius on taking that hard right. Because right now, trailer trucks coming off the turnpike, actually, you either have to wait for someone that's in the left-hand turning line lane going towards the turnpike to either move, or they block the intersection, or they run over the curb. And the way the realignment is, which I do think will make it a little bit easier to navigate that intersection, because everybody doesn't know if they're in the second lane, the third lane, the right lane, or they're going from the third to the first lane. Which lane, right? Exactly, and we're usually behind them trying not to run them over.
[1:11:51] Speaker B (unidentified): So you take up the whole road?
[1:11:53] Adam: We take up the whole road, whether people like it or not. But has there been some thought given into that radius in particular, heading south onto Pullen Road, especially where this new connector doesn't appear to be trailer truck friendly?
[1:12:06] Speaker B (unidentified): It's not, and I appreciate you saying that. It is not trailer truck friendly. It's meant to get the bulk of the traffic out, which is not new, right, but it, that right-hand turn, frankly, is slightly better than actually today, okay, in terms of that curb return or the, or the radius of that curb line. We've, Dylan and I have spent many conversations at his desk about talking about turning movements. It's a tough corner, that is a tough corner, especially with that retaining wall and the landscaping there right above it. We're trying to be sensitive to that, because that's a historic property, but we recognize that if we make it worse, then to users like that, with tractor-trailer trucks, it's going to be problematic.
[1:12:49] Adam: All right. The other comment I had was where the connector road meets Portland Road. That's at the base of that small hill just beyond the automotive store right now. Yes. There won't be any light there. That will be just currently a stop. Correct. Correct. Is site distance an issue there currently? I just picture, you know, because we do a lot of work on Center Road with excavation equipment and currently now coming up to where it meets 202 with that dangerous intersection. It is a lousy intersection, but primarily when we come out of Center Road, we're going out 115 because that's where all the pits are. That's an easy turn to make right now. If we have to take the right and go out to Portland Road at the base of that hill, a lot of times we're loaded because we don't run around empty because there's no money in that. Taking that left loaded, I mean, we don't get across the road really fast when we're loaded. So that's why I was asking about sight distance and people pitching off over that small knoll.
[1:13:53] Speaker B (unidentified): I would say it's in an area that's still plenty of sight distance. I know it doesn't feel like it in your truck, probably,
[1:14:02] Adam: based on how they want to me then there's the people that are coming at me
[1:14:04] Speaker B (unidentified): but I hear you and part of this is and this is where it may feel a little uncomfortable is what you're gonna see is dramatically people are gonna drive differently because the speeds will be different and the expectation here is that people are gonna be driving slower from the dairy bar up the hill and so where you come out of that connector people will already be doing 25 or 30 where today they don't do that until they get to many motors right at the intersection right and so that 's the expectation of the goal the other the other well
[1:14:37] Adam: sorry the other subject i wanted to bring up too is that if the brown street realignment you know gets narrowed and it will make it more difficult for trucks especially coming from 115 which there is still a significant amount of truck traffic off 115 since portland sand has sold there is a little less traffic than there was but there's still a significant amount that light that used to take the 26 brown road street light used to take some of that truck traffic heading north on lewiston road if that goes away all truck traffic dump truck trailer truck delivery truck what a food truck they're all going to go to that one light and take the right to go either north or they're going to take a left and go towards the bypass currently coming south into town if you have a heavy truck we can no longer use short shaker road because that has been a posted road so we're not bypass over or well if we're coming south on route one on lewiston road coming down from north gray so we're coming From New Gloucester on Route 100, yes, so currently any truck coming south, we're not supposed to use Weymouth Road anymore because that's now been posted. Yes, there's only four ways to get from Lewiston Road to Route 26 right now. It's Mayall Road, which is a horrible road for heavy trucks, especially where it meets Sabbath Day Road, because it's about 150 degree turn. Weymouth Road is a logical bypass or ring road, but now there's signs on that we're not supposed to use it. We can't use Short Shaker Road anymore because it's posted, so virtually all truck traffic, 115, Route 100 from Portland, Route 100 from Lewis, has to go through that one intersection and head towards the bypass. So this is creating a giant funnel for the heavy truck traffic, which is the one thing everybody in Gray Village wants to get the heck out of Gray Village. So my concerns are, one, 115, where it meets that large intersection, you're gonna have trucks stacking up back 115, because we have no other alternative. A lot of us are gonna be taking the hard right and headed north on Lewiston Road. I just wonder if people get what they want with this, if they're gonna want what they get once we get concentrated in that one location, because we all have to go through it. That's just my only concern, thank you. I really appreciate
[1:17:01] Speaker B (unidentified): your feedback, and the reality is there is that component here, right, of your type of traffic is the commonplace of what happens here. From our perspective, there's a lot of volume, or there's a lot of benefit to fixing the mobility. From what we're showing, that you'll see benefit that may not be readily apparent today on people. So yeah, you know, and I and I appreciate that. I know this is, it feels kind of fuzzy, honestly. We have a lot of confidence based on how much traffic can push through up and down on the page that the other lakes, and to your point on truck traffic is what slows down the whole area, we'll actually see a benefit.
[1:17:49] Adam: Yeah, but I think, yeah, sorry, as a whole, we keep getting pigeonholed closer and closer to the center, which is where nobody wants. I can tell you, I've been driving through this all my life with trucks. I see all these folks.
[1:18:00] Judy Seminole: I know them all. I don't want to go through the village either.
[1:18:03] Adam: I want to go out and around. I want to stay out of the village. But every year that goes by, we keep getting forced right into the center.
[1:18:10] Ernie Marshallton: There's no way for you to go. Yep, yeah, no, I mean, your comments are valid, and we're going to go back and obviously look at if there's any way we can help you further. We're obviously going to try the whole Shaker Road, that kind of put a another one in you, but you know, we'll go back, we'll talk to the town, we'll look at things. But I think the other thing on Brown Street, it truly is a local road, and the town wants it to be a true local road for other opportunities, for other things, so but thank you. for those comments great comments thank
[1:18:44] Rick Light: you Rick light from France circle I got a host of questions and I'll try to keep it short and maybe just focus on a couple things first it's just great to finally see after 30 years that the DoT we're working together in partnership with the DoT to move something forward at the end of my questions I'm just gonna don't let me forget to ask about phasing I think that is critical to the project and how you phase the project in this disruption that happens when you do phasing for a construction That we all know about. A couple things, one is the, you talked about behavior, and a lot of what happens is about human behavior, and I think was Dan McGuire took my thunder. You talked about when you come into on 202, you see this nice beautiful sweeping curve, and the lanes line up perfectly, and it's it's yellow going red, guess what people are gonna do. So the 25 miles speed limit now is 3540 to get to the next light by the Duncan-Dowens-Brown intersection. So I talked about this at the Charette, that two things about that is, and I think Dan's right, is either maybe putting more of a curve in there, but the thing that we're not talking about, and I realize you're at the 25% point, is the character of the village and how to save the village. Traffic is a three-legged stool. You've got pedestrian bike safety, which is just as important, if not more important than traffic, when you think about the vitality of the village, the character of the village, and what we're creating between the curb line and these buildings, and what are we allowed, what's going to be left for us to deal with in terms of the streetscape, that's the human scale, and I realize you're 25%, but once we get to BDR in my knowledge, when you get to a certain point geometrically, the geometry doesn't change. So things to think about with the landscaping and the treatment of the village as we go along, but on that corner, imagine coming in 202, as it is now, it's just wide open like a highway. It's going to be a highway. We've got to make, I think you really ought to think about having a center median as you come in by the fire station with landscape median, like a four or six foot, you know, even a four foot median. Same thing as Falmouth has on Lunt Road and, you know, in Route 1 down by Moose Crossing or whatever. That little bit makes a huge difference as you come into the village. Change the character from basically a four-lane highway, actually five-lane, of all pavement, and the character, you're coming into the village as a gateway. So that's a gateway moment, I think, as a way to accomplish that. Two is pedestrian crossing. When you're at, you know, by the fire station, let's call it, and there's a crosswalk. That's about 100 feet across, round figures. And without a refuge, without a refuge island, you imagine, and I think we've all seen it here in town, and thank God I haven't been one of those people because my kids are older but parents with a stroller and a kid in tow in one hand and yes I've been told by your traffic engineers I agree that the crossings are all going to be signal they're going to be you know have the audible and what not you're going to have the timing on there that doesn't take away the human behavior you're scared as Crap to cross that hundred feet regardless of whether it says you got 15 seconds and so a way of doing that is to basically cut that 100 feet into 250 or 40 foot sections with a refuge island so I would think as you're developing the details because this will enter into the geometry is you allow space for those islands and I do applaud the fact that you're reducing to 11 foot lanes there's absolutely no need for more than 11 foot lanes and Brown Street ought to be 10 with parallel parking and We ought to be looking at parallel parking wherever we can get it because that is as you know that's one of the greatest ways to capture the essence of a village and to slow traffic so rather than putting in bump outs in addition to putting a bump but I should say it's a great way to change behavior and change the feeling of the village while allowing the same capacity and the same speeds and same volume to move through so just I think as we go forward those kind of pieces are going to be super important to how this thing shapes the village. Otherwise, we could end up with something like, just, you know, just a, I mean, it's like a windom but a little different character, you know, just a lot of traffic moving. So I think that's important, but I applaud you're thinking about that. 25 miles an hour obviously is absolutely critical. Another thing you mentioned is gateways, and I think just as we go forward, you know, when you come into Collie Hill with a new torrent T intersection, that is a great place to create sort of a gateway, maybe with some center treatment and some surface treatments, but you sort of, that's, that's where you slow down people coming south on 202 past the Legion. It's going to be signed with, you said, 30, 35, they're going to be doing until it, you know, someone's there watching, they do 40. You get to Colley Hill, that kind of says that's the interest, that's the village, slow down to 25, and nothing's going to make people do it until they're into the village. So some kind of a gateway treatment there I think would really be helpful, important, you know, for again, we're talking behavior, people's behavior, yeah. Brown Street, I totally understand the comments about the trucks and the turning. And same with, you said, let me go back to coming up 202 from the northbound, say you're northbound on the turnpike, come on to Main Street, we're at 202, and to get to the intersection with a large truck is just crazy. We've got this connector, and you want to make a pedestrian-scale 14-foot lane or whatever one way. Hey, let's use modalities like at-grade surface treatments so you've got a big right-turn radius, but it looks like a 14-foot with a 10-foot radius. So the trucks can take the connector. It's foolish to go into the center of town, as Ed mentioned, and try to do that 130-degree corner, which they do today, and you're going to fix it, but it's still going to be a 130-degree corner or whatever, and stop all traffic when you've got a connector that you just built to save trucks. That's the, you're going to take a right like the connector, so it feels narrow, but do that, you do the intersection treatment and the turning movement treatment so that it feels smaller, let the trucks make That movement and use the connector to come out, you know, below Dunn's and go south on 100 to Portland Road. There's something to think about. Yeah, that's another thing, but I think those are kind of my key takeaways, but I appreciate the fact that we're finally working together on this after 30 years and now, so I don't forget myself as phasing. I think how this is phase is going to be critical, and I think what would be nice as we move forward and you mentioned that the 30 million dollar current budget is going to be at least 40, at least 40 in five years, is the timing is the disruption, but I mean to see, I think there's a taxpayer someone lives in the village or listen town, it'd be nice to see a project in this town get done, anything, so seriously, it's just stagnant, nothing, you know, it doesn't change. I mean, right now to me, if we're gonna wait five years, this is different story. We ought to be putting a, you know, a one-inch surface coat on all of downtown. I know it's wasted money, but just because five years from now you won't, you'll need a four-wheel drive to get through the downtown as it is. It's horrible. It's getting worse. Just as a band-aid till we get to the point of starting the project, but I'll just be quick here, but taking 115 for instance, that's something I think is a piece of the project could be phased at one time while you wait to do the rest of the project. You follow me? So at least that way you're doing some improvements. You haven't tackled maybe the major intersection, but there's ways I think thinking about phasing and how it affects both the persona of the town seeing something get done rather than waiting five years to turn a shovel over. Well, I'm watching Falmouth and Yarmouth and our neighbors take the Tehote money and start projects and finish them in two or three years, you know, so I think just thinking about those things all together is a full project and how the character of the village is really going to be, you know, can be very positively affected on this if we do it right. So thank you. Sorry to be so winded.
[1:26:38] Ernie Marshallton: No, thank you. Thank you for the feedback. You know, I was looking at Dan, and he's going to give us six feet of that sidewalk out in front of the fire station so we'll be able to put that island in there. Right, Dan? No, I mean, all great comments and all stuff that we're going to certainly look at from a road diet standpoint, you know, trying to see how we can massage this thing to make it safe for pedestrians and refuge and stuff like that. It's tough at that intersection and I'll leave it at that just because of the historical properties and what's there. As far as phasing and construction, yeah. I mean this is all nighttime work in reality. When this goes to construction it's going to be probably nighttime work because I don't know how you would survive daytime construction equipment in this area. I mean they have a hard enough time driving from the gravel pit through the project area right now, let alone under construction, but I'm not trying to be funny there, but that's a serious thing when it comes to light it's like, it's going to have to be a pretty elaborate construction schedule and obviously that's going to all go into details and I'll be retired in three years, so I might miss the dirt flying, but
[1:27:53] Lauren Ashland: follow up to the skepticism of Yamath Road connecting into 100 and perhaps for us vehicles using Brown Road as a backup choice the roadway coming into onto 100 is a single lane right now side Duncan Donuts any opportunity to expand that into it white lane turning additional
[1:28:21] Speaker B (unidentified): just to be clear you're talking Portland Road No, I'm talking Brown Road. You're talking up here, up by Duncan?
[1:28:28] Lauren Ashland: Yes, a right turn lane off Brown Road onto 100. Okay. [Speaker B (unidentified): Up here.] That's a bottleneck, a big bottleneck. The backup plan, I didn't think about that.
[1:28:48] Ernie Marshallton: What about the driver behavior thing? Okay, keep that.
[1:28:52] Lauren Ashland: Just moving cars through there versus the big dump trucks.
[1:28:56] Ernie Marshallton: Keep that driver behavior.
[1:28:57] Speaker B (unidentified): But to that point, we're not precluding regular traffic, meaning patching the cars using brown
[1:29:03] Judy Seminole: to McDonald's yes thank you sir yes ma'am yes Judy Seminole I just wanted to
[1:29:25] Speaker R (unidentified): comment on the fact that what Rick had said about waiting five years because I was going to come before the DOT and recommend some things in the interim, like doing a soft code on the road right now. I mean, we're waiting five years. I mean, there are yield signs that need to be corrected, overrun. In front of that fire historical thing, the yield signs are too small. The little island gets rid, you know, the enter there is really dangerous. So there are some real issues that I think that can be addressed instead of waiting five years. I think it's too dangerous in too many places that have to wait that long, And I think it would definitely improve things in the town just to do some, you know things Proactively now, you know that aren't going to impact the thing in five years. So, thank you
[1:30:13] Ernie Marshallton: Yeah, I think based off that comment, you know, it's it's one of those things where you know Do T's looking at a lot of light treatments, you know for the for the foreseeable future just because of you know The funding gaps all across the nation. We're feeling the same pinch. So I requested that this project area get that LCP-like capital payment. It's going to be short-lived. As we all know, the drainage is just absolutely miserable out there, and that one inch is just going to be blown up in short order. But that's on the radar right now to make happen.
[1:30:54] Dan McGuire: I know this isn't strictly about the streets, but do you foresee when the funding the funding ratio is changing will we still be on the hook for roughly 10% of the total project that is still the plan Dan
[1:31:10] Ernie Marshallton: I have not heard anything different but it all depends on you know what's gonna happen over the next couple months and toward the end of the year where that federal reauthorization bill comes out and where you stand today is exactly at
[1:31:25] Kayla: 10 percent hi my name is kayla obviously i'm not new to driving these roads but i'm relatively new to driving them on a daily basis i am really looking for more of a confirmation because i'm sure you guys have directional arrows on there i just can't see them from here with the tighter right turn onto brown street is that road gonna continue to be a bi-directional so you can take a left from Main Street on, I'm sorry, yes, a left off of Main Street onto Brown Street and then a left onto Yarmouth Road from Brown and then also further down where you connect Yarmouth Road and West Gray, what is that tip of the intersection going to look like for someone going down West Gray to get to the highway? Yeah, to answer your first
[1:32:24] Ernie Marshallton: question is we actually looked at making Brown Street one way one way headed toward 202 you know so as if you come down the only way you're gonna get to it is this way you wouldn't be able to take a right in or a left in you would have to find another way to navigate so we looked at one way here just to make other opportunities for the town to make improvements to what they were looking at for their development plan but in the end it's two-way
[1:32:56] Kayla: and then what about coming off the end of yarmouth road towards the highway so yarmouth
[1:33:03] Speaker B (unidentified): So this is Yarmouth Road here, right? So this actually will clean, I'll say be cleaned up some. So yes, you can take a left towards the towards the interstate, and likewise you can take a right from the Turnpike Tour or from 202 on the Armored Throne. Yep.
[1:33:27] Xan Gas: I'm on Xan Gas, and I've been working on bike ped safety in the village since 2012, so I'm really excited to see the plan at this phase. I'm looking forward to the future phases and hearing more about the ways in which more friction will be created between vehicles and bikers and pedestrians to enhance pedestrian safety because what one of these we have now is people who are walking through the village and are you know in the crosswalks walking with the lights as they should get yelled at by car drivers telling them they shouldn't be in the crosswalk it's like well you know we're crossing with the signal and so I guess one of the things I'm interested in hearing more about and maybe this is for a later phase is just how you will sort of synchronize to what extent that the distances I think as Rick mentioned across the roads will be shortened or to make them safer for pedestrians and kind of how you'll synchronize the signals so that there will be ample time for pedestrians to get across those roadways but I also just do want to mention and for people who may not be aware that the storm drains in the village are failing. They're 50 to 75 years old. We have to fix them. And when we're ripping up the roads to fix the storm drains, it makes sense to fix some of the other problems in the village. And that's kind of what we've been working on for the last, I don't know, long time now. And I also just really want to acknowledge that MDOT has traveled a great distance in the process of our planning. We did not start at 25 miles per hour through the village, and I was really pleased to hear that today. Obviously, people being what they are, as Ernie has said, they're going to try to drive faster if they feel like conditions permit, but that's why some of these other things like bump-outs or parallel parking can help to create what they call friction to try to give visual signals to drivers that it's not safe to go 30 or 40 you know 40 50 miles an hour through the village because you know somebody may be opening a car door or coming out from between the cars are going you know on the crosswalk So I, you know, it is going to be a balance. It wasn't, it's intended to be a better balance, but also to just try to make it a little bit safer for bikers and pedestrians through the
[1:35:57] Speaker B (unidentified): village. Thank you. I would say that your statement about bicycle and pedestrian safety and those sorts of things, there isn't one crosswalk in the project area that isn't shorter in this than it is today. So there is a substantial improvement from a, but pedestrian perspective, and the second component of that is how it's combined with the traffic signals will be much more effective and safer than it is today. So both of those will be substantial
[1:36:29] Ernie Marshallton: improvements over today. Okay, just to follow up on a comment over there, so the question was this parallel park, and there is parallel parking designed as part of the project. It's one of the things that's going to be the delicate balance between landscaping, sidewalks, multi-use path, parallel parking, all those things are gonna have to come into play and be analyzed and diagnosed as to what fits. So none of this, I mean, it's a, it's a best guess right now with what HNTB has on these plans showing the parallel parking. It's not perfect, but it is shown there because that's part of the town's planning study to provide on-street parking, but that's one of the things that we really have to look at a little bit closer to either have or be able to make fit. So that's, that's a
[1:37:21] Carolyn: jump ball right at the moment carolyn i'm just a great resident i was just wondering it and this probably isn't the correct phase to talk about this but lighting like it looks like we're putting in a lot of sidewalks which is awesome and i use them a lot in the winter i have a high active dog so i use them in the winter and it's about to get dark at four o'clock so I was just curious if there's gonna be a lot of lighting for the sidewalks because that's I don't know it's huge like because it's pretty dark out there. I walk it right now and it is terrifying to like cross at Brown Street, like where there is limited sidewalks. So I didn't know if the lighting for pedestrians, like if that's gonna be enhanced or not. Yes, they'll be, they'll be lighting
[1:38:12] Ernie Marshallton: lighting throughout the project. I will say we talked a little bit about signage, talk a little bit about lighting. It's going to look very different than it does today at night. It's going to light up, not like the Vegas Strip, but it's, it's, it's going to light up. So it's going to be very safe for folks walking at night and you'll be seen. Thank
[1:38:38] Rick Light: You thank you over to have this today very
[1:38:40] Speaker B (unidentified): Informative I look you live over and not be wrote but love to spend more time to kind of downtown. I'm just curious if you could talk about synchronization of the lights
[1:38:48] Andy Bar Height: and how that actually would work together.
[1:38:51] Speaker B (unidentified): I think it's great that they
[1:38:52] Speaker J (unidentified): would be connected and not kind of
[1:38:55] Speaker B (unidentified): operating independently, but is that on a set schedule?
[1:38:58] Rick Light: Is it a function of actually analyzing traffic
[1:39:00] Speaker B (unidentified): in real time? Just curious how that would work. So you're not going to like my answer. It's a little bit of everything. The current technology has some preset timing, both based on the traffic volumes and both a.m. and p.m. But the why they put that word adaptive in interconnectedness the new technology allows it to learn itself over the course of time it will essentially evaluate based on the traffic volumes in the interaction between I'll say signal one signal two and signal three and it will actually adapt over time to improve the efficiency and in one of the great things is the technology allows us to incrementally improve frankly remotely those phases those timings to be far more effective the technology is so much more remote oriented than it used to be 10 years ago or 20 years ago that frankly Ernie staff can from Augusta can make changes to the signal equipment purely from someone's desk in Augusta so it's really a great opportunity but it requires complete replacement of said equipment to be able to talk to each other yep great question yeah we have what we call a TMC Center
[1:40:20] Ernie Marshallton: at DOT traffic management center so all the new smart signals that have been put up you can physically sit in that room and they're all video cameras and you can sit there and watch traffic and you can adjust the cabinet if it needs to be adjusted it's it's it's pretty crazy remember that thing about me being at this 25 years and it's taking me 24 years to kind of accept traffic modeling it does work and it's even more effective now with the smart signals my
[1:40:53] Meg Bar Hate: name is Meg bar hate and I live on [street] I grew up in gray and I'm raising my son here and you know my whole life obviously this has been a big disaster I'm not a truck driver I grew up with an engineer I'm married to an engineer but I'm very much a layperson in terms of all this and I feel like I'm learning so much in terms of how you think about slowing people down and I'm gonna be looking at roads a lot differently as I drive now I just want I'm just kind of walking away from this Feeling really excited and hopeful. Obviously we're only at 25%. There's a lot of questions and things to figure out, you know, thinking about the trucks and all of that. But even just seeing like Brown Road go straight across to the library, we go to the library at least once a week, and trying to like finagle that turn always terrifies me. We come up from by the highway coming into Gray Center, and that, you know, the center road that you're gonna dead end, that also terrifies me, like just some of the pain points that I've seen in my whole life. I'm seeing some thought around here. And I also just love the vision that there's space for some more pedestrians, some more growth around the Brown Street area. And with all the council members being here, just how exciting that feels when I'm on the playground with other parents. You know, the conversation is very often like, wouldn't it be great if we could just like have a drink on the deck or go, you know, there are places, you know, there's Local Centric, there's Aroma Joe. Like there's places you can do things, but to just kind of build on that and have more spaces for us to be a village again. There's a lot here already, but to kind of continue to invest and build in that, so just kind of leaving, learning a lot, feeling excited, and thank you for all of this. I really appreciate it. Well,
[1:42:41] Speaker B (unidentified): appreciate the feedback. That is the goal. I
[1:42:46] Ernie Marshallton: think should be perfect for the
[1:42:47] Speaker B (unidentified): development committee, and sounds like she just volunteered, but I think you
[1:42:55] Ernie Marshallton: know, I think me as DOT and represented DOT that is backing this project, they haven't shied away from it, and almost killed me a couple times, so I'm still breathing, so I want to make maintain my livelihood. But you know, it's it's been around a while. There's been a lot of stuff going back and forth, and it hasn't been, you know, all swell, as I'll say. And I think now we're at the point now where, as we progress from tonight, we all know some of the challenges. Great comments, thank you. I haven't had a public hearing with this much common knowledge in a long time, where folks interior came to say, hey, have you looked at this? We can only assume, we all assume why we're here, because the safety issues out there, but you guys have shed some light on a couple other things that, you know, really we haven't dove into yet, so we're going back. It's being recorded, so thank you for recording this tonight. We'll go back and watch that too. You'll be able to go back and watch it right, Lauren, on Facebook, is it, or YouTube on YouTube. One thing that I'm going to talk to Kyle about is whatever is here tonight for information. I want to make sure he can link it directly to the town's web page, so you'll be able to go on the town's web page and find it better, easier, instead of you know typing in a link or the QR code if you have a smartphone and you know what QR codes are. That'll, that'll, if you take a photo of it, 'll take you to that virtual public meeting that's going to run from tonight till the 28th, so you have two weeks to go on and view all this information again, and you can physically provide a comment on there, so just another.