JOHN CAMEROTA
WESTFIELD – The Traffic Commission reviewed an engineering report which will be submitted to the state Department of Transportation in support of the city’s Notre Dame Neighborhood Truck Exclusion request.
The city is trying to divert heavy commercial through-traffic from the neighborhood to the east of North Elm Street and north of Union Street. Trucks making deliveries to residents and businesses in the neighborhood will still be allowed.
Streets which will be included in the heavy commercial truck exclusion include the lower part of Notre Dame Street, Moseley Avenue, Woodmont, Dartmouth, Harvard, Westminster, Princeton and Columbia Street, as well as Columbia Place.
“We voted to seek the truck exclusion,” Police Chief John Camerota, who serves as chairman of the Traffic Commission, said this morning. “and requested (City Engineer) Mark Cressotti to hire an engineering consultant to write the report which is required by the DOT to provide technical data it needs for its review.”
“We didn’t see the need to make changes (at the Wednesday meeting) so we told Mark to send it out to the DOT,” Camerota said.
MARK CRESSOTTI
The engineering study, and analysis of heavy commercial truck traffic through the neighborhood, was performed by Tighe & Bond of Southampton Road. Residents of that neighborhood have long complained that heavy trucks use their residential streets, which were never design to support that traffic, as a cut through to reach the North Elm Street Corridor, Routes 10 and 202 and the Massachusetts Turnpike.
The proposed truck exclusion would prohibit commercial trucks from entering the neighborhood street from either the North Elm Street or Union Street sides. Camerota said that the exclusion, if approved by the DOT based on the engineering study, will then be sent to the City Council for inclusion in city ordinances.
The city has to provide the heavy commercial trucks with an adequate alternative route. The city is slowly improving the major traffic corridors, upgrading downtown streets to improve traffic flow and reduce congestion that has plagued the city, and motorists, for decades.
The proposed exclusion would require heavy commercial traffic to continue south on North Elm Street, cross the Great River Bridge, make a left U-turn in front of Holy Trinity Church, then travel north back over the bridge to gain access to Union Street.
The truck exclusion concept came out of a public meeting for residents of Prospect Hill and the Lower Notre Dame neighborhood to discuss a major reconfiguration project on North Elm Street at the intersection of Notre Dame Street. Initially, that work was anticipated to begin later this summer following the opening of the Pochassic Street Bridge, but has been delayed until the spring of 2015.
Camerota said the Traffic Commission is also assessing the possibility of establishing truck exclusion for Crown Street, another residential street used as a shortcut by commercial vehicles, an issue raised by Prospect Hill Residents at the April 14 informational meeting attended by more than 70 residents.
