SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (WWLP) – Over the last few years, State Street has been at the center of the pedestrian safety discussion after a number of people were hit by cars.
Now, with this funding through the Federal Highway Administration, Springfield DPW Director Chris Cignoli sees this as one of roughly two dozen projects he wants to take a targeted approach to address.
“We aren’t talking about some intersection project where you might see the intersection completely a mess for 8 months,” Cignoli said.
Springfield and Boston were the only two cities to receive funding through the grant program, with Springfield receiving more money. Called the Safe Streets and Roads for All Implementation Grant, the idea is to do just that. Making streets and intersections safer for people whether they’re on foot or on wheels, by narrowing lanes to curb speeding or investing in high visibility crosswalks.
DPW wants to spend roughly $1.4 million on Page Boulevard to make upgrades like adding a sidewalk. Chris Cignoli said this area doesn’t get a lot of crashes but it’s still important to make these upgrades.
“In something like Page boulevard there are not a lot of them but when they are, they’re very severe,” he said. “So how do you balance that? and that’s what we’re going to be looking at.”
On Monday, February 13th the City Council is expected to hear how DPW wants to allocate the funding, and then get started with construction this year into next year.
Hiram Vega of Springfield is glad to hear more funding is on the way, however he wants to see more done about paving, “There’s a lot of potholes right now under my car there’s a noise under the wheel and it’s a brand new car.”
