LEWISTON — A traffic light at Strawberry Avenue and lowered median made a redesign plan for Main Street palatable to neighbors Tuesday night.
Councilors voted 7-0 to sign an agreement with the Maine Department of Transportation spelling out the details of how the road will be remade.
The biggest issue for neighbors, especially those living along Brooks Avenue, was a median that would have blocked left turns out of their street onto Main Street.
According to the new plan, the new median will be at grade and will allow residents to turn left out of their street.
The state will monitor the intersection, and will install a full raised median if there are four accidents there and at nearby Strawberry Avenue.
“I think I can support this compromise,” said Dr. Roger Bergeron, who runs his optometry practice out of a building at Brooks and Main streets.
But Bergeron urged the city to work with Dunkin’ Donuts to keep traffic turning into the Strawberry Avenue store from Main Street and to build a U-turn area south of Russell Street.
The stretch of road sees an average of 24,000 cars per day, according to city officials. The road currently has one southbound lane, one northbound lane and a dedicated lane for northbound cars turning into Strawberry Avenue.
The Maine Department of Transportation plans call for turning the three-lane stretch north of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Bridge into a four-lane road — one lane southbound, two lanes northbound and a dedicated turn lane for Strawberry Avenue. The plan includes a traffic signal at the Strawberry Avenue intersection.
But not everyone was happy. Ron Comeau of 584 Main St. said the widened road will require the state to take over as much as 8 feet of his property, putting the road that much closer to his front door and taking away a parking space. He’s worried about removing snow from his property and replacing that parking space.
But City Administrator Ed Barrett said the city would bend over backward to help Comeau design and build his new parking space.
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