By Adam Swift
A pilot program to ease traffic congestion on Harris Street has raised concerns and questions from numerous nearby residents.
Last week, city officials met with many of those residents at the public library to hear those concerns and begin to look at options moving forward.
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 many residents said the changes have led to increased traffic and congestion on the surrounding streets, and frustrated drivers using private driveways and parking lots as areas to cut through traffic or turn around.
At last week’s meeting, the city’s planning and community development director, Tom Skwierawski provided a brief history of how the pilot program came to be, as well as data that has been collected both before and after the pilot program began.
However, Skwierawski was quick to note that the city was not putting all its eggs in the basket of the data that has been collected so far, and acknowledged the frustrations that have come with the traffic change.
Skwierawski received questions about both removing the pilot program altogether and returning Harris Street to its original two-way pattern, as well as the possibility of making all of Harris Street one-way.
“The reason not to remove the two-way traffic from that stretch is to remove a five-leg intersection and make it a four-leg intersection which theoretically should run a lot more efficient,” said Skwierawski. “I understand it doesn’t, I hear you all loud and clear. I understand things aren’t working the way they should.”
The data that has been collected shows that there should be improvements across the board at every intersection, Skwierawski said.
“It obviously is not, I’m not trying to tell you all that, I’m just trying to say that this is how it is supposed to be,” he said. “There are some tweaks that might improve it; if it doesn’t, we are going to fix it and I can commit to all of that.”
Skwierawski said the situation is also made more difficult because MassDOT is involved with some of the roads involved.
Some of the short-term fixes he said are on the table include working with MassDOT to tweak the traffic signal model based on updated data, targeted snow removal, and exploring long-term design tweaks such as neck-downs at Harris Street, a bus lane relocation at Beach Street, and further directional changes.
In addition, the city and state are working to expedite a Bell Circle slip lane that is part of the larger Bell Circle redesign project. Skwierawski said that the slip lane could help ease traffic and be in place by the fall.
Councillor-at-Large Joanne McKenna suggested that the city create a working group to look at the Harris Street traffic issues that includes some of the residents who have concerns.
“I want to remind everybody what happened when we changed Sigourney and Derby, we changed the directions of those streets, they experienced relief, but it was a nightmare for the surrounding streets,” said Ward 3 Councillor Anthony Cogliandro. “Now, we are experiencing that nightmare times three. Beach Street on both sides of Butler, Eustis, Sewall, Elm, Bixby, all of it, and then you go up the other way … everyone is trying to fight through and use all of those streets as a cut-through now.”
Cogliandro asked if the city was making the changes because MassDOT was already changing the intersection or if it was collaborative with the city.
“It’s been talked about for 13 years now in Revere, mitigation work related to Suffolk Downs,” said Skwierawski. “So this predates (Suffolk Downs developer) HYM’s involvement. This was taken as an opportunity to fix intersections that … understood, it’s worse today, I get that … but it was bad before.
“There was an effort to improve the efficiency of that intersection,” he continued. “It’s not working right now, but that’s why they talked about it in 2013, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2023; it’s been discussed for a long time, not in response to HYM, but because it is an intersection that needed to be fixed.”
Skwierawski said he wasn’t in Revere at the time the discussions began, but said it was likely that MassDOT played a role.
“In the permitting process, I’m sure they inserted themselves and wanted to fix this intersection, as well,” he said.
