Concord TAC presses for transparency as staff rolls out road‑safety ranking tool tied to $2.5 million

Concord’s Transportation Advisory Committee spent much of its March 3 meeting pressing staff and consultant Stantec for clearer data and deadlines after an initial briefing on a public road‑safety ranking tool intended to compile citizen requests and help prioritize safety investments.

Bill Scarpatti of Stantec, who assisted with the executive summary, said the tool consolidates requests and applies screening criteria so the town can “capture all these activities” and then decide which become actionable projects. He told the committee the initiative follows a recent town meeting allocation of $2.5 million to spend on roadside safety projects over five years and that staff will publish the list of candidate projects and mapping information to support TAC’s review.

Why it matters: TAC members said they need the input list, the scoring parameters and GIS maps to evaluate which projects are feasible to advance this season and to ensure the tool reflects concerns for vulnerable road users. “If there is time pressure for TAC to come up with a process this year…what is that timeline?” asked Rebecca Woodward, pressing staff for a date. Staff responded that decisions about items that could be incorporated into current paving contracts would likely need to be made within the next couple of months — roughly by May.

Staff and representatives described the tool as a starting point that still needs refinement. Scarpatti said the “people” scoring component was based on past workshops and will need a replacement approach for future inputs; he suggested short‑term prioritization by TAC followed by a longer‑term public process. Town engineer Steve DuPont said the two paving contracts already let for this season create opportunities to attach lower‑cost safety improvements to planned resurfacing work.

TAC members and public commenters asked for transparency on the tool’s inputs and scoring. A committee member who reviewed the materials said the initial document the group received did not include the names or details of the dozens of projects it covers; Scarpatti and staff agreed to provide an Excel export and a GIS view of the pavement program and candidate projects. “We can certainly provide this, in an Excel format, and you can certainly start to work with that,” Scarpatti said.

Public commenters urged that the ranking explicitly weigh safety for pedestrians, cyclists and people with disabilities and asked to see the underlying spreadsheet of parameters and scores. Linda Nemeth told the committee she wanted to see how the matrix accounts for ADA compliance, Complete Streets criteria and risks to vulnerable users. Karen of Upland Road recommended public sample scoring “deep‑dives” for a small set of projects so residents can understand how the rankings were produced.

What’s next: Staff committed to circulate Bill Scarpatti’s appendix, provide the spreadsheet and GIS map of identified paving locations, and walk TAC through the top projects at a joint TAC/Public Works Commission meeting scheduled next Wednesday afternoon. TAC members were asked to review the materials in advance so they can propose near‑term priorities for potential incorporation into this construction season.