Council Wastes Time and Money on North Avenue

The following open letter is from Safe Streets Wakefield

At Monday’s Town Council meeting four members of the Town Council voted to overturn North Avenue’s Lane configuration approved in June, 2024 and installed in December, 2024, which provided space for pedestrians, bikes and motor vehicles. Last year’s Council voted to install the new layout for at least a full, 3-season rollout (spring, summer and Fall 2025) when the highest levels of car, pedestrian and bike use occur to gather data on travel speeds and usage.

The current North Avenue configuration underwent years of public discussion and review by the Town.

Monday night’s slapdash proposal night was approved by a 4-3 vote and was only distributed to the public as a Council meeting agenda attachment a week prior to the meeting. This proposal included several significant errors in design that went uncorrected in the rush to vote on it. In repealing the existing design four (4) members of the Council (Carney, Dombroski, McLane, and Vincent) willfully ignored:

• 12 previous Council meetings where the Bike/Ped plan and North Avenue re-design was on the agenda
• the input of 360 Wakefield residents who completed a survey that called for road improvements including bike lanes, published in the Town’s Bicycle and Pedestrian plan
• 20 residents who submitted written comments in support of keeping the current layout in advance of Monday night’s meeting and 6 who attended in person

For years, North Avenue had excessively wide travel lanes (ranging from 14 to 16-feet wide) that encouraged faster driving speeds often in excess of 40 MPH. It lacked sufficient pedestrian crosswalks and was widely considered hazardous for bike travel even by experienced bike riders. The wider sidewalk has significantly improved pedestrian safety and comfort. The main travel lanes were striped at 11.5 feet wide, which is still wider than the more common standard width of 11-foot lanes used in the Massachusetts DOT roadway standards (www.mass.gov/dot), Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and the standards used by other professional road design agencies.

This month was to begin the full, 3-season rollout of the new layout approved by the Council last June. Instead, the current Council could not tolerate having the 3-season rollout period. One of their motivations was a vitriolic dislike of the bike lane which has been best expressed by Dombroski who has said publicly “…roads are designed only for cars”.

With Monday’s vote, these four (4) members of the Council also voted to waste approximately $57,000 of our tax dollars. They voted to waste $17,000 to remove and re-stripe the road that was just done last Fall. They voted to waste an additional $40,000 spent on the removeable flex posts that were purchased for use on the protected bike lane. Councilor Dombroski likes to champion his fiscal credentials and has campaigned on “being a responsible steward of every tax dollar”. Monday night Dombroski and McLane showed they don’t mind wasting tax dollars in their desire to reverse a previous Council’s decision; a decision that was never implemented and allowed to be reviewed by the community. Wakefield deserves better leadership, on the Council and in the Treasurer position.