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After nearly a year of work, a committee has unveiled its recommendations for how Belfast can improve the ability of people to get in and around the city with bikes, wheelchairs and their own feet.
With state and local funding, the city’s pedestrian, transportation and accessibility committee has worked with consultants and solicited residents’ feedback to produce the 107-page report.
So far, the city has not approved additional funding for making any of the upgrades, which include the creation of more sidewalks, the improvement of pedestrian crossings and the linking together of existing bike paths to create a 12-mile loop around the city. But the City Council voted this week to accept the plan.
The fact that the city has taken on the study points to the ongoing desire across the midcoast and other parts of Maine to ease the ability of people to get around their communities without vehicles.
There’s a shortage of public transit and safe pedestrian options in the state, which can make it harder for residents to access work, services or recreation if they don’t have a car. It can also exacerbate larger issues, including climate change from gasoline use and the difficulty of people getting to jobs in more expensive regions such as the midcoast.
During a presentation this week, Mike Lydon, a consultant from the group Street Plans that helped produce the Belfast plan, told councilors that some of its lower-cost solutions could be implemented sooner than later.
“I’m looking forward to using it as a roadmap, so to speak,” Councilor Brenda Bonneville, who is on the pedestrian committee, said about the report.
Here are some of the recommendations.
More and better sidewalks
The plan devoted significant attention to sidewalks, which offer the most basic forms of safe pedestrian transportation but which could be expanded and improved in Belfast.
Right now, Belfast has 15.5 miles of sidewalk, but the vast majority are in the areas surrounding downtown and just 34 percent of them are in good condition. Meanwhile, the study found that a quarter of them — especially those outside downtown — are in poor or partially poor shape.
The plan proposes adding an additional 6.28 miles of sidewalk and upgrading the most heavily used existing ones, with new standards to ensure they’re durable and accessible to people with disabilities. However, acknowledging the trade-offs that would be required to fund that work, the authors also identified more than two miles of sidewalk that the city could remove because they get little use.
“A significant portion of the sidewalk expansion plan is along segments within the proposed 12-mile Circle Route, which aims to connect the majority of Belfast’s open space assets,” the plan states. “Extensions down Belmont Avenue, Swan Lake Avenue, and Salmond [and] Condon Street(s) will link areas of future residential and commercial growth with the active transportation and open space networks.”
Improved bike access
Another key aspect is expanding the 10.7 miles of bikeways that now exist in Belfast, including 7.6 miles of bike lanes along roads and 3.1 miles of rail trail.
The report recommends a combination of adding 2.75 miles of new bike lanes and upgrading existing ones with better markings and other protections. The larger goal is to build out a network of paths and expanded shoulders to help people who live in the developing areas outside the Route 1 bypass to get into town. It also recommends building more bike paths along existing Central Maine Power utility corridors.
Retrofitting main routes
The report also recommends improving two of the major routes through Belfast: Main Street and Route 1.
To improve the former, it advocates eventually switching from diagonal to parallel street parking in the downtown, which would allow sidewalks to be widened and additional amenities, including benches, bike racks, trees and seasonal outdoor dining.
To improve the accessibility of Route 1 for cyclists and pedestrians, it proposed adding a roundabout at the intersection with Lincolnville Avenue, which is in the commercial corridor that includes Hannaford.
“The addition of a modern roundabout, protected bike lanes, pedestrian/bike refuge islands, and high-visibility crossings will increase accessibility, reduce crossing distances, improve stormwater filtration, and slow drivers down,” the report says.
Post Office Square
In the longer term, the plan also advocates redesigning the busy six-way intersection at Post Office Square in downtown, where Main, Franklin, Church and Beaver streets all meet.
It proposes incrementally converting Beaver Street into a pedestrian plaza and converting the area to a four-way intersection that requires all drivers to stop.
“This complex, six-way intersection is iconic and serves as the gateway to the historic downtown core,” the plan states. “However, it is challenging for people to traverse no matter how they get around.”
