Adding bike lanes, changing angled parking to parallel spaces and replacing traffic lights with roundabouts are some of the most dramatic changes that could come to the heart of downtown Bangor.
The ideas were presented as preliminary recommendations for how the city could reduce congestion downtown and make the area safer, especially for pedestrians and bicyclists. The suggestions are part of the Maine Department of Transportation’s Village Partnership Initiative, which allows the state to partner with communities to spruce up their downtowns using federal funding.
This project follows years of efforts from the city and local organizations to make downtown Bangor more attractive and welcoming to residents and visitors alike. The effort to improve road safety also comes after Bangor saw 17 pedestrian crashes last year and 23 crashes in 2022, three of which were fatal, according to data from the Maine Department of Transportation.
The city is working with the Bangor Area Comprehensive Transportation System; Maine DOT; Sewall, a Bangor-based engineering firm; and Viewshed, a landscape architectural company from Yarmouth, to make the project possible.
In a public meeting last week, the group presented suggestions they developed based on feedback Bangor residents gave earlier in the year on ways they’d like to see downtown Bangor improve.
Of those, perhaps the most drastic changes would be allowing two-way traffic on Central, State and Harlow streets and replacing traffic lights in certain intersections with roundabouts. Those intersections include State, Exchange and Harlow streets; Harlow and Central streets; and Broad and Washington streets.
Changing angled parking on Main Street, Central, Harlow and State streets to parallel parking was another suggestion for those roads, which the group sees as the heart of Bangor’s downtown.
Switching the parking configuration would create more space for travel lanes, as angled parking requires roughly double the space that parallel parking needs, the study found. This additional room would create space for bicycle lanes to be painted on each side of the streets.
Another idea included reducing the width of the road behind the Picking Square Parking Garage and creating a riverfront park along the Kenduskeag Stream. That area is underused and now holds mostly asphalt, so adding green space would make it more welcoming, mitigate future flooding and help lead pedestrians to the Bangor waterfront, said Jessica Kimball, Viewshed’s landscape architecture director.
Finally, Broad Street could become a “shared plaza” from West Market Square to the Bangor Transit Center, the preliminary findings suggest. This arrangement would look like a bricked, curbless area that cars, pedestrians and bicyclists can all use.
The intent is to use the area, which doesn’t see much vehicle traffic compared with the surrounding roads, to draw people from the transit center and the parking garage into downtown Bangor, Kimball said.
Other smaller tweaks could include expanding sidewalks near intersections to shorten crosswalks, so pedestrians are spending less time in the street where they’re at risk of getting hit by a car.
People can now see a full list of the group’s detailed recommendations and give feedback on each idea in an online survey. That feedback will be collected for several weeks before final recommendations are released later this year.
