Ward 4 City Councilors Krintzman, Gentile, and Markiewicz report that State Senator Cynthia Creem may have found a way to help find a path forward for the Commonwealth Avenue Carriageway Redesign Project. The City Council was poised to vote on the conceptual design of the project at its Full Council meeting on May 2nd (begins at 2:15:15). After a 1-hour and 45-minute debate -which included dropping a possible trial and substituting Option 3 with Option 2 – the motion to substitute failed to carry with 11 votes in favor and 11 votes against and the item was chartered by Councilor Gentile. Option 3 and the three options can be seen here. Options 1 and 2 can be seen here. Because the item was chartered, the item went to the Full Council on May 16th. At that meeting, a motion was made to substitute Option 2 for Option 3, and that vote failed to carry with 12 votes in favor and 12 voted against (Councilors Bowman, Crossley, Danberg, Downs, Greenberg, Grossman, Humphrey, Kelley, Leary, Noel, Ryan, Albright). A motion was made and passed unanimously to postpone the item to a date certain and that date is tonight.
According to the report, Senator Creem had added language to the FY2023 Budget that would require MassDOT to maintain a traffic signal at the intersection of Comm Ave and Ash Street in addition to the upgrades along the south side of the carriageway that it has agreed to do.
“Our belief is that if Senator Creem’s language survives into the final version of the state budget, we will have a best case scenario. Call it Option #3+, that is Option #3, with a traffic signal.”
