Select Board asks engineers to model three Common Road options after town-center safety briefing

Valerie, the planner leading the town-center study, told the Select Board the project will “improve safety for all users in town center, looking at vehicle safety, pedestrian, and cyclist safety,” and described concept-level measures including signal-timing optimization, sidewalks and physically separated bicycle lanes.

The board spent the bulk of the presentation debating the future of Common Road, a contentious local change since the library project and prior votes. After back-and-forth with residents and planners about data limits and turning movements, the Select Board directed staff to amend the engineers’ contract so the consultants evaluate three explicit scenarios — “keep the road closed permanently, make it a 1 way, [or] make it a 2 way” — and return a concise pros-and-cons comparison and traffic-simulation results to the board for a scheduled follow-up meeting.

“Those three options,” the chair said during the meeting, “look to me like the path forward so we can get a clear, objective comparison.” Board members pressed the consultants for particular details: a member asked whether a permissive or protected left turn on Library Hill would be modeled, and another requested that the engineers study parking impacts and the implications of retaining or removing the new curb and sidewalk in front of the library.

Valerie told the board the consultants can use existing data to simulate conditions and that the MPO and prior engineers had assumed a one-way condition in early analyses; she also acknowledged gaps in the MPO’s counts, which covered a limited window and did not include Sunday volumes. “One thing the MPO did recommend was a study catching the Sunday traffic,” she said.

Town staff suggested the board could target an August or September meeting to review the engineered comparison; one board member recommended a short, itemized deliverable showing the three options and the traffic implications for Library Hill Road and the signalized intersections. The town administrator noted that town meeting had appropriated $100,000 toward town-center work and said a small amendment to the contract could be funded from that appropriation to get the additional analysis.

The board did not take a final policy vote about Common Road at the meeting. Instead, it voted to direct staff to prepare an amendment to the engineer’s scope to evaluate the three options and return specific traffic-model outputs and recommendations for the board’s review at a future meeting.