The Town Council continues to try to make Middletown even more livable with a traffic speed and safety review of High Street and Miantonomi Avenue. Live, work, play, Middletown.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Matt Sheley at (401) 712-2221 or msheley@middletownri.com
HIGH STREET, MIANTONOMI AVENUE GETTING
SPEED, SAFETY REVIEW
MIDDLETOWN, R.I. (JULY 8, 2021) – Two more of the Town’s busier roads are getting a speed and safety review.
At the urging of Councilman Christopher Logan, the Town Council approved a contract earlier this week with PARE Corporation to study High Street and Miantonomi Avenue to see if improvements could be made.
Logan said the idea came about after he visited High Street recently and was concerned about some of the driving he saw there and other nearby streets.
“I saw somebody blow through the stop sign at the intersection of Paul Avenue, right in front of my own eyes,” Logan said. “I have to take action, we have to do something about it. There are residents that live up there, the (Middletown) Valley (Park) is so accessible there and you have a lot of pedestrians walking that street now because of the access to the Valley.”
In recent years, the Town Council has quietly made the safety of local streets a top priority in Middletown.
New signs, sidewalks and other measures have been installed on several roads, all intended to help slow down traffic naturally and make the community friendlier to pedestrians and bicyclists.
It all started in earnest with a project on Forest Avenue to reduce the amount of cut through traffic between East Main and West Main roads. Speed tables, speed notification signs and other steps proved to be high impact-low cost changes in the area.
Similar improvements were rolled out on Chase’s Lane, Oliphant Lane, Green End Avenue and other locations. A new three-way stop was put in at the intersection of Mitchell’s Lane, Third Beach Road and Wapping Road to improve the safety by Howland Park. The Town is in the process of making adjustments to Paradise Avenue, which is used during the summer months as a shortcut to the beaches.
Before PARE Engineering gets too far down the road with its recommendations for High Street and Miantonomi Avenue, council members asked the Lincoln firm to make sure they’d obtained input from neighbors. That way, when any recommendations are put forward to the council, they’ll likely have buy-in from residents and businesspeople.
“If there’s substantial public input at the workshop and changes need to be made, once the changes are made, the neighbors should look at it again and say ‘Yup! Go to work. That’s exactly what we thought,’” said Councilwoman Terri Flynn, saying she wanted any work done once and done right.
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