[B]URLINGTON — A reconfiguration of a busy section of North Avenue will get a progress report next month, but some city councilors are concerned area residents won’t feel their voices are being heard in the review process.
In June the Department of Public Works took four-lane sections of North Avenue through the New North End neighborhood and converted them to three lanes with a middle turn lane and protected bike lanes.
The move was aimed at addressing traffic safety issues on the roadway, which the state Agency of Transportation had identified as a high crash area, and where traffic stop data collected by police show there were high levels of speeding.
However, some New North End residents were vehemently opposed to the change, raising concerns about increased traffic and arguing that the pilot program was being foisted on them by overly bike-friendly city officials.
Opposition to the experiment gathered enough steam to put a question on the Town Meeting Day ballot last March, asking city voters whether to scrap the pilot before it began. The question ultimately failed, but in New North End Wards 4 and 7 it garnered a majority of votes.
The 2014 City Council resolution approving the pilot program requires the city to gather data and feedback on its implementation and present findings at the four-month mark. That presentation is scheduled for Oct. 17 and will combine traffic safety data with public input.
After the presentation, city councilors will have the opportunity to tweak the pilot, cut it short or leave it as it stands.
Much of the public feedback is being gathered through an online survey launched earlier this month that is open through Sunday.
At Monday’s City Council meeting, Councilor Kurt Wright, R-Ward 4, led an unsuccessful effort to have that survey mailed to all New North End residents. A resolution he co-sponsored with fellow New North End Councilor Dave Hartnett, I-North District, failed on a 7 to 4 vote. The measure was opposed by the mayor and city officials.
There’s a perception that using an online survey is intended to bypass seniors or others who might not be computer-literate, Wright said, adding that he’s concerned some New North End residents, already skeptical of the pilot process, will feel the city is looking to affirm a predetermined outcome.
Choosing not to mail the survey will further opponents’ disillusionment with the process and could trigger another effort to put the pilot’s future on the November or March ballot, he said.
Chapin Spencer, director of the Department of Public Works, said 69 percent of the more than 1,600 survey respondents provided addresses in the New North End, suggesting their voices are being heard.
Many residents didn’t want a survey conducted until school started, bringing school buses and increased traffic to North Avenue. That left his department with a tight window to conduct its survey, which other residents had demanded be conducted by a third party to ensure impartiality, he said.
Councilors were invited to review the survey, and could have asked for it to be mailed at that time, instead of several weeks into the process.
“We were halfway through it and this alternative idea came up,” Spencer said.
The city hired consultants to conduct the survey. Their contract doesn’t cover mailing the survey or the manual data entry that would be required to log those results, Spencer said. If they were to mail surveys now, the results wouldn’t be tabulated until well after the presentation in October. That would mean no changes could be made before winter, he added.
Department officials attended a number of public meetings, including monthly Neighborhood Planning Association meetings and a Sept. 20 public forum to gather feedback as well, he said.
Public input has already led to changes to the road configuration, he said. For example, the city added a bus pull-in at the Ethan Allen Shopping Center, where the protected bike lanes were backing up traffic into the intersection when buses stopped to pick up passengers.
Spencer said the DPW will conduct another survey in the spring, and he promised that those surveys will be mailed to residents. He also said the survey isn’t the only way his department is gathering feedback.
In May or June, just before the one-year trial run is scheduled to end, Spencer said DPW will make a recommendation based on the traffic safety data and public feedback as to whether the changes should become permanent.
At that point, the City Council will have the final say on the fate of North Avenue’s new look.
Correction: The link to the public feedback survey has been corrected.
