Long-awaited roadwork updates out of City Council

An assortment of roadwork projects around the city, some of them nearly a decade in the making, saw forward progress at the City Council’s special summer session on Monday.

Councilors approved a National Grid project to replace gas mains along South Street, which had brought up concerns about traffic and neighborhood disruption when first proposed over a year and a half ago.

Ward 9 Councilor Robert G. Logan added a list of conditions for the utility, requiring National Grid to receive approval from the Traffic Commission, submit a rodent mitigation plan to the city and wait until the end of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority’s planned Felton Street utilities project that’s scheduled for May 2027.

Councilors also approved $3.7 million in city utilities work by the city’s Engineering Department, which has been updating municipal water mains every summer. Out of that funding, nearly $1.6 million comes from older engineering projects that came in under budget. 

City Engineer Robert Winn said his department will work this summer to replace water mains on Bolton, Caughey, Clinton, Cutter, Day, Graymore and Mount Pleasant streets and patch any resulting holes. 

He said the Public Works Department is in charge of repaving those streets and will get to that work in a timely manner.

That in and of itself is big news for residents of Mount Pleasant Street, whose private way repaving petition has been in front of the City Council for years. The city has been working to advance petitions to repave Mount Pleasant and five other private ways — Buxton Lane, Marion Street, Kenmore Road/Kenmore Terrace, Milner Street and Blossom Street — since some of them were submitted in 2017. The City Council on Monday voted to accept cost estimates and payment allocations compiled by the Law Department for the street repaving plans.

Beaver Street safety improvements get green light

The council also this week voted to use eminent domain laws to take land and create permanent easements — a right to use and traverse a parcel of land — from the owners of two lots on the private way Pelham Road. 

This is part of a redesign of the intersection of Warren Street and Pelham Road, which, according to Councilor-at-Large Randall J. LeBlanc, has also been in the works since 2017. The city will use the easements to place traffic signals, install additional wiring and paint crosswalks.

The council additionally approved $32,000 in extra design funding for a project to create a safer railroad crossing across Beaver Street.

Traffic Engineer J. Michael Garvin said the intersection is the only at-grade railroad crossing in the city where trains do not stop and can present a significant danger to commuters. Over the last few years the department has been working with Nitsch Engineering to redesign the intersection with additional safety measures, including improved pedestrian crossings and a new type of railroad gate. This additional funding will cover signal updates added after a joint review with the MBTA.