By Adam Swift
City councillors and residents are looking to reverse traffic changes that were instituted on Harris Street and the surrounding neighborhood last December.
Last December, the city instituted a 90-day pilot program for Harris Street aimed at taking cut-through traffic off the road.
Harris Street became a one-way road northbound from Winthrop Avenue to Sewall Street and two left turn lanes were added to Revere Beach Parkway Southbound, and one right turn was added to Revere Beach Parkway Northbound. A right turn slip lane from Route 16 to Harris Street was added.
But since the changes, many neighborhood residents and some city councillors have expressed deep concerns about traffic congestion and safety issues the changes have created.
Monday night, city councillors Anthony Cogliandro, Joanne McKenna, and James Mercurio introduced a motion asking that the mayor and planning director work with MassDoT to revert the Winthrop Avenue, Harris Street, and Route 16 intersection back to the original configuration.
The council also heard from city Planning and Community Development Director Tom Skwierawski and a number of area residents concerning the motion.
“First and foremost, I filed this motion on behalf of the residents of the Harris Street area, the East Mountain Ave. area, the Beach Street area, I could keep going on and on,” said Cogliandoro. “I have never in my life, and I’ve lived in the city 43 years, seen a simple street reconfiguration affect such a huge portion of the city.”
McKenna said that in addition to the changes on Harris Street, she said she had serious concerns about the recent traffic change on Revere Beach Parkway heading into Bell Circle towards Beachmont.
“Since the installation of the red light, the vehicles turning toward Beachmont, traffic has been backed up all the way to the Revere skating rink,” said McKenna. “Further, drivers are waiting up to 15 minutes in traffic … it’s never been backed up like that before, we’ve always had yield signs, previously there was a right-hand yield sign with just one lane, there wasn’t two lanes, that’s why they had to put the red light in place, and the traffic flowed much more efficiently. The current light appears to be creating significant congestion in the area, and I hope this situation can be reviewed and evaluated as the delays are causing major inconvenience for residents and commuters.”
Mercurio said that since the changes were implemented in the Harris Street area, he has heard from dozens of residents about the impact the new traffic pattern is having on their neighborhood.
“Many of these residents have taken the time to organize and submit a petition asking the city to recognize this change,” he said. “I want to be clear tonight, I support the residents and I support the request to review this pilot program.”
Mercurio said the voices of the people who experience traffic in their neighborhoods every day must be heard.
“One of the main concerns is that neighborhood streets should not become solutions for regional traffic problems,” he said. “Much of the congestion that we see in wards 1 and 3 is tied to regional traffic tied to Bell Circle and Rte. 16. Streets like Harris Street were never designed to absorb this type of traffic; any long-term solutions should focus on managing regional traffic, not shifting congestion from one residential street to another.”
Mercurio said residents are seeing more vehicles in surrounding neighborhoods, leading to more congestion and frustration. The sudden change to making a part of Harris Street a one-way street has also led to safety issues with motorists seeking alternate routes and turning around in residents’ driveways.
“We must consider the quality of life that impacts the residents of Ward 1 and Ward 3 who already experienced heavy traffic due to regional congestion,” Mercurio said. “Diverting additional vehicles onto regional residential streets affects safety for children walking in the neighborhood, increases noise, impacts parking, and ultimately affects the livability of those neighborhoods.”
Ward 2 Councillor Ira Novoselsky said he agreed with the issues raised, but said that because of the MassDOT roadways involved, it could be difficult to revert back to the previous traffic patterns.
A number of residents spoke out and raised many of the concerns mentioned by Mercurio.
Beach Street resident Molly O’Hara presented the council with a petition requesting a reversal of the traffic pattern change on Harris Street and the surrounding neighborhood.
O’Hara said the residents may hear alternative fixes for the neighborhood from Skwierawski and others in the city, but she said some of those same issues were addressed at a neighborhood meeting in February and had yet to be addressed.
“The gridlock continues, residential neighborhoods are overwhelmed, intersections are backing up well beyond capacity,” said O’Hara. “This is a daily occurrence, emergency vehicles are delayed, parents are navigating unsafe school drop-offs, and residents are sitting through multiple light cycles just to leave their streets.”
In addition, O’Hara said drivers are cutting through side roads at unsafe speeds and public safety and the quality of life for the neighborhood has been compromised.
“I understand that reversing Harris Street may require a signal reconfiguration in coordination with MassDOT, I understand that it might not be simple, but complexity does not justify inaction,” O’Hara said. “Residents are not asking for layered adjustments or more experimentation in surrounding neighborhoods or more skewed data. They are asking for a clear correction to the change that caused this disruption.
“I am submitting this petition with over 200 signatures on behalf of residents who want this decisive action, not another round of modifications.”
Skwieraski acknowledged the issues that have arisen as part of the traffic pattern changes and highlighted some of the steps that have been taken to adjust some of those issues.
“I won’t dispute anything that’s been discussed tonight,” said Skwierawski. “In fact, leading up to that meeting (with the neighborhood in February), I was given the first round of data looking at now we were doing with this project and it was actually showing that we were doing a great job and there were great reductions in traffic and everything was rainbows and sunshine and I could see with my own eyes that it wasn’t.”
He said he has committed to making sure the city does what it can to fix the problem.
“This all started as far back as 2013 when Suffolk Downs and the initial casino mitigation discussions were had and then later on when it became an HYM mixed-used development, it’s always been discussed as a project,” said Skwierwaski.
The impetus for the project was to address the 2,000 cars per day going through a residential street and the failing intersection. Skwierawski said he appreciated that those issues were not being properly addressed with the plan when it was originally implemented.
One of the biggest issues, he said, was that there were some serious signal coordination issues.
“The timing of the signals was not properly calibrated to the situation on the ground,” Skwierawski. “I would still argue that it is the single biggest hurdle and potentially the biggest opportunity you have to fix this problem.”
The second biggest issue was the large amount of snow Revere has seen this winter, making it difficult to maneuver on narrow city streets.
“Third is just behavior change, as a few people mentioned, this is going to require a change in the way people act, whether they are going to choose Winthrop Avenue or Beach Street,” Skwierawski said, adding that there is still an issue with people going down Harris Street expecting they can go all the way through.
“Another issue is the Bell Circle bottleneck,” he said. “We have an additional plan to add a slip lane to Bell Circle so folks can actually get right onto Rte. 16 and take that double left-hand turn onto Winthrop Ave. and utilize the new signal there. That would basically provide an additional outlet for some of this traffic and some of this queuing, but there is that bottleneck right at PLS Check Cashing.”
Skwieraski said there was also an issue with choosing a traffic solution that pleased no one.
“We wanted to move 2,000 cars off Harris Street, we did not want to redirect them,” he said. “But there were four different traffic commission meetings where different iterations were discussed, and ultimately it landed on this pilot having still the ability for traffic to go through Harris Street and turning on Sewall and Library and out back to Winthrop Ave.”
To get the desired results, Skwierawski said he personally believed access to the neighborhood should be closed off altogether.
“But I think before we get there, we need to do several other things to create conditions where that will work,” he said.
The city has created a dedicated left turn to Rte. 16 from Winthrop Avenue providing a safer left turn.
“The second thing we did, and we just implemented this on Friday, was fix the signal timing with a new system called Dynamic Max,” said Skwierawski, noting that he and the city engineers went to MassDOT to tell them the previous signal system was not working.
While the change might not fix all the issues, Skwierawski said he did believe there have been significant improvements as a part of the signal changes.
Skwieraski also invited residents to join a focus group to look at the traffic issues in the neighborhood.
“I am not going to fight for something that doesn’t work, I want to make sure that we know what direction we are going in and that we go in the right direction,” he said. “But if we’re not going in the right direction I will be right there with you all, pounding the table, complaining to MassDOT to fix this. Councilor Novoselski is also right, going back to the way things were is probably not possible given that is a MassDOT roadway and they would not approve a signal plan like that for a move to a four leg to a five leg intersection … it’s not something they would generally approve.”