Brewer wants to make its busiest roads more attractive, efficient and safe for drivers, bicyclists and pedestrians.
To do this, residents liked the idea of painting bike lanes throughout the city, improving sidewalks and adding more landscaping to improve the look of Brewer. These changes, officials hope, would help create a more recognizable downtown area.
The city could make all these changes by participating in the Maine Department of Transportation’s Village Partnership Initiative, which allows the state to partner with communities to spruce up their downtowns and make them safer using federal funding.
Brewer is teaming up with Stantec, a Topsham-based engineering, architecture and environmental consultant, and the Bangor Area Comprehensive Transportation System for the project.
The program gives Brewer the opportunity to create a distinct and attractive downtown that could draw residents and visitors to local businesses and amenities, which the city now lacks, said Soubanh Phanthay, Brewer’s deputy mayor.
“Brewer doesn’t have a downtown now; we’re a cut-through,” Phanthay said. “I see this project as an opportunity for Brewer to prepare for the future.”
The Village Partnership Initiative coverage area includes North and South Main Street, then
runs up Center, Wilson and State streets, as those roads are particularly busy and hold five high crash locations, according to Maine DOT data from the past decade.
The intersections of North Main and State streets and where North Main, South Main and Wilson streets converge are particularly dangerous, according to Jessa Berna, a project manager from Stantec.
Officials from Maine DOT and Stantec led a public meeting on Monday to gather feedback from residents on what they’d like Brewer’s streets to look like in the future. Stantec will use that input to develop recommendations for how the city’s roads could be improved in the coming months.
In the meeting, several residents commented on how difficult or hazardous biking in Brewer is, as the city has no marked bike lanes.
While Brewer’s paved Riverwalk trail draws hundreds of people each day, a lack of bike lanes, crosswalks and sidewalks that give walkers a buffer between vehicles make it difficult for pedestrians and bicyclists to reach the path safely without a car, Phanthay said.
For example, when Phanthay wants to take his daughter for a bike ride, he drives to the Riverwalk with their bicycles to use the path.
“I don’t want to drive to bike,” Phanthay said. “I want to be able to leave my house and bike there.”
Jack McKay, director of Food AND Medicine, commutes by bicycle from Bangor to reach the organization’s headquarters off South Main Street in Brewer.
While he’s able to ride along the Riverwalk for part of the journey where he’s protected from cars, he eventually has to navigate South Main Street, which has little to no road shoulder for him to ride in.
McKay said the hardest part of the trip is when he has to squeeze past the I-395 interchange on South Main Street where the road shoulder disappears, leaving no room between him and drivers who are often speeding and preoccupied.
“It’s miserable, it’s dangerous and it’s not much fun at all,” McKay said.
Brewer resident Craig Jones relies on the Community Connector, the regional bus system, to get to work in Bangor. But he often works until 8 p.m. or 9 p.m., long after the bus stops running, so he’ll usually ride his bicycle home. While this option saves him from taking a cab, which can cost $15 to take him just a few miles, it’s often dangerous because Brewer doesn’t have any bike lanes, he said.
In addition to bike lanes, Jones said he’d like to see longer crosswalk signals to give pedestrians with mobility limitations more time to get across wide roads. This could be further improved, he said, if vehicle traffic in all directions stopped while pedestrians have the walk signal.
While some suggestions residents offered could be larger, such as adjusting travel lanes on certain roads, smaller changes like adding trash cans at bus stops and improving green spaces by planting fruit and blossoming trees, could change how people experience the city, Phanthay said.
The Village Partnership Initiative is happening in tandem with another project called the South Main Street Corridor Study, which evaluates how South Main Street in Brewer from Wilson Street to Abbott Street could be safer and more efficient.
