By Ward Peck

Editor

    The Cape Elizabeth Road Safety Working Group,
charged with promoting pedestrian and bicycle safety and reducing
unsafe driving in town, agreed to form a second committee to help
shepherd the redevelopment of the town center intersection of Route 77,
Shore Road and Scott Dyer Road.

    That project, funded largely through the Portland
Area Comprehensive Transportation (PACTS) budget, is in the earliest
stages of planning, according to Town Manager Michael McGovern. He said
Maine Department of Transportation (MDOT) crews have only recently
begun survey work at the site and the results of that survey will not
be complete for several months.

    He warned the road safety group that PACTS is not
likely to accept any significant changes to the scope of the work,
including replacing the proposed traffic light with a traffic circle.
But McGovern did suggest the town could have significant influence on
the final design if it develops an organized effort during the planning
process.

    While the date of the proposed town center
intersection committee’s initial organizational meeting has not been
decided, the road safety group discussed who should be on such a
committee, including resident landscape architects, owners of property
abutting the intersection and members of the planning board. The
committee also agreed to hire it’s own traffic engineer to provide
independent analysis of any design concepts proposed by MDOT.

    McGovern also suggested the working group’s chair,
Town Councilor and State Representative-elect Cynthia Dill’s presence
on any such committee would help encourage MDOT to take the town’s
suggestions into account during the planning design phase of the
project.

    “MDOT takes not when state elected officials have interest,” McGovern said.

    The committee also discussed the two other major
areas of its charge,” forming a traffic calming policy working group
member Richard Berman and Town Planner Maureen O’Meara presented a
refined draft of a proposal they submitted at an earlier meeting that
outlines the steps a resident would take to address concerns of
speeding and aggressive driving in a particular neighborhood.

    While the details of such a proposal are still being
refined, the policy calls for a series of graduated levels of
neighborhood consensus to trigger more invasive methods of traffic
calming from passive measures such as increased enforcement, standard
methods such as to turning restrictions to physical alterations such as
speed tables or traffic circles.

    Each step involves increasing higher levels of
neighborhood consensus and traffic study findings of high speed and
large traffic volumes. Some roads such as Spurwink, Shore Road, Route
77 and Sawyer Road, would be exempt from measures other than passive
methods

    In the area of pedestrian/ bicycle safety, Berman
suggested the group recommend several sites for paths and sidewalks
previously recommended in 1996 including an off-street path along Shore
and a sidewalk on Shore Road from Fort Williams south to Dyer Pond
Road; sidewalks throughout the town center; a sidewalk along Fowler
Road from the town center to Fenway Road and two-foot wide shoulders on
either side of Mitchell Road.

    The group decided not to include cost estimates for these projects when they are presented to the council.