SWAMPSCOTT — The town is considering several proposals for a redesign of Walker Road, and especially the intersection with Banks Road, including making the street a one-way and installing a roundabout.
In a community meeting Monday night, neighbors voiced their opinions on the different ideas for the area, which is part of the Olmsted Historic District.
“Anybody that comes down Banks or Walker and gets to that intersection knows you’re taking your life into your own hands,” said Department of Public Works Director Gino Cresta. “We’re lucky there’s not a lot of accidents there. That’s something that needs to be corrected.”
The town received a $400,000 grant from the Complete Streets program at the Massachusetts Department of Transportation for the project, which will be broken into two phases to address different sections of the road. The first phase will address the section of Walker Road between Paradise Road and Banks Road.
The town has introduced three separate ideas for the Walker-Banks intersection, which engineer Kelly Stevens described as an “offset” intersection with low visibility that makes right-of-way confusing for drivers. All of the suggestions would include set-back crosswalks away from the center of the intersection to increase pedestrian safety.
The first idea is a “peanut-shaped” roundabout, which would include two small islands with a crosswalk traversing the entire intersection in the middle, in addition to the set-back crosswalks.
“This is a great solution for passenger vehicles. It really improves flow,” Stevens said. “It eliminates the problem of who has the right of way. It keeps traffic moving, it eliminates some of the dead space in the middle of the intersection and lanes are delineated.”
Stevens said the issue with this design would be that larger vehicles, such as box trucks and fire trucks, would have to traverse the intersection to make left turns because they would not have the turning radius to go around the roundabout normally.
The second proposed idea would be keeping the intersection mostly as is, but moving the crosswalks back and installing a center island to better delineate lanes.
The final suggestion was two mini roundabouts, which would eliminate the turning radius issue for larger vehicles, but would make it a more complicated traffic pattern.
In addition to redesigning the intersection, the town is considering making Walker Road a one-way, with traffic travelling from Paradise to Banks. If that was done, there would be space to install a 10-foot bicycle and pedestrian lane, as well as marked street parking.
Neighbors voiced many concerns about safety on the street, which is often used as a cut-through through Swampscott. Several objected to the idea of making Walker one way, worried that the change would drive traffic to Farragut Road.
“I think we’re really mindful that we really have to think about how the intersections on and off Walker Road need to be coordinated and how we’re going to develop driving patterns,” said Town Administrator Sean Fitzgerald.
The town is still considering the options, and hopes to perform tests of the most-supported possibilities this spring.
