Clarksburg Awarded $920K MassWorks Grant for RoadBy Tammy Daniels, iBerkshires Staff
07:45PM / Tuesday, October 21, 2014 | |
 Clarksburg students on 'Bike to School Day' last year. The town has received a MassWorks grant to reconstruct West Cross Road and make it safer for walking and biking. |
CLARKSBURG, Mass. — Clarksburg was awarded a $920,000 MassWorks grant on Tuesday to address long-delayed roadwork along West Cross Road.
"I am ecstatic," said Town Administrator Carl McKinney. "My first month, it's what I worked on almost exclusively."
McKinney is new to the town administrator post but not to the efforts to obtain the grant. As a member of the Board of the Selectmen in the past, he had advocated for the state help to address the deteriorating road structure.
The town's been applying for the funding, then known as the Small Town Road Assistance Program or STRAP, for the past seven or eight years. In 2010, town meeting authorized borrowing in anticipation of the grant, which didn't come through. Two years later, $10,000 was spent to do preliminary engineering in hopes of advancing the town's application.
McKinney said he built on applications made by the former town administrators — Thomas Webb and Michael Canales —and updated the data.
He also extensively documented areas of concern, including the 12 failing culverts, four of which are expensive open-bottom styles. Nearly 100 pictures were sent to the state Department of Transportation to illustrate the problems, including one of car trying to get around pedestrians who had no choice but to walk along the edge of the road.
One piece of data confirmed what McKinney's said for years: The small town's roads are heavily trafficked.
"In one day, we recorded 2,164 cars [on West Cross Road]," he said. "That is almost as much traffic as Route 8."
In addition to the state highway [River Road], West Cross and Middle Road in particular are transportation corridors used to reach Southern Vermont. The town's roads took a beating in the aftermath of Tropical Storm Irene because the major road damage throughout Vermont.
"When you look at the numbers of the traffic, it blew my mind," McKinney said. "[Residents] are concerned about the speed and the safety. We can't let our roads get any worse, we have to be on top of this."
The Cross Town Corridor Project will include repaving 3,600 linear feet of West Cross Road and replacing all 12 culverts to meet Safe Stream Crossing Standards.
The roadway will be stripped, ground and relaid, with a new 1 1/2 coat of pavement on top. Pedestrian and bikeways will be added to the sides along with rumble strips for safety.
"This is the core of the town's geographic center," said McKinney. "Now we can build out from the center. It will be safer for the bicyclists and safer for pedestrians."
McKinney said the application was significantly helped by letters of support submitted by state Sen. Benjamin B. Downing, state Rep. Gailanne Cariddi, North Adams Mayor Richard Alcombright and Amanda Chilson, the local coordinator for the state's Mass in Motion program.
Mass in Motion is promoting healthy lifestyles, especially through walking and biking, but the town's roads aren't very safe for those activities.
"They all wrote really nice letters in support of this so that obviously that helped," he said.
The selectmen and other officials have been apprised of the grant being awarded. McKinney said the next step will design and full engineering.
"I'm so excited. I'm just tickled pink," he said. "We needed this badly."
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