Photo: Jay Willet/WBZ NewsRadio
SOMERVILLE, Mass. (WBZ NewsRadio) — Residents in Somerville are waiting for the city to complete construction on the nearly two miles of cracks and crevices on Highland Avenue that still exist a year after the road work began, making travel uncomfortable for residents.
"The bus ride is really rough, like there's some parts of this road where you're like bouncing in the seat, and the seats are hard, so it's not pleasant," said one resident.
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A large chunk of the road was repaved on Highland Avenue last year after sewer utility work, but crews left unpaved lanes to the curb, and the work doesn't extend to Davis Square. Now the city wants to add two-way protected bike lanes by 2030, although some cyclists avoid the area altogether.
"It's not good. It's not a pleasant street to bike on. I avoid biking on this street at all costs as like someone who doesn't have a car," another resident stated.
The city council recently passed a resolution demanding answers from the mayor's office on the delays surrounding the project.
"The issue with the Highland Ave redesign is that where we stand is nowhere," City Councilor Ben Ewen-Campen, who pushed for the resolution, told WBZ NewsRadio. "There has been absolutely no movement or progress on redesigning this street for years. Back in 2019, 2020, the city made a public, clear commitment that we were going to redesign Highland Ave. We were going to make it safe for cyclists, for pedestrians, for people who take the T, and there have been a number of public meetings, a number of public commitments, and yet here we are, four or five years later, nothing has been done. There are no plans as far as I can tell. We’re just kind of sitting in purgatory."
When asked about last year's repaving that was not followed up on, Ewen-Campen said, "The point of doing the partial repaving was that we were going to launch a robust community process to actually redesign and rebuild Highland Ave, so you don’t want to dump a bunch of money into a massive paving project now that’s just going to get ripped up. The issue is that we don’t actually seem to be doing that redesign process now, so basically what we have is a kind of temporary fix for part of Highland Ave, and no clear timeline for when we’re going to get a Highland Ave that’s actually safe."
On what Somerville residents can do about the situation, the councilor said, "People should reach out to their elected officials and let them know that this is a really top priority, and that we can’t keep just kicking the can down the road. I’ve been having these conversations for years. Every couple years, it is reaffirmed to that this is a priority, that the urgency is heard and felt by the administration. I’ve just gotten to a point now where until I’ve seen action, I think it’s all talk."
WBZ NewsRadio reached out to the city as well. The latest update from the city was more than 18 months ago, which stated that the full redesign and reconstruction would begin earlier this year.
WBZ NewsRadio’s Jay Willet (@JayWilletWBZ) reports.