Maine Dept. of Transportation Commissioner David Cole met with local officials and toured several problem areas on state roads in Lincoln County Aug. 10.
Cole viewed an intersection in Waldoboro where residents have requested a traffic light, several culverts, a sinkhole-prone area on the Bristol Road in Damariscotta and a large culvert installation on the Biscay Road in Bremen.
DOT Chief Engineer Dave Bernhardt joined Cole. The pair answered questions and heard concerns from Waldoboro Town Manager William Post, Waldoboro Public Works Director John Daigle, State Sen. David Trahan and State Rep. Jon McKane.
The commissioner visited the county at Trahan’s request to see the problem areas first hand. Cole and Bernhardt said most of the sites fall under the state’s jurisdiction and might be fixed in the coming years.
The first stop on the tour was the intersection of Jefferson Street, Depot Street and Rt. 1 in Waldoboro.
Several months ago the state held a public hearing to discuss an improvement project for the intersection that involved adding traffic islands on Rt. 1 and reworking the pedestrian crossings.
“Only one out of the 30 or so people that attended that meeting spoke in favor of the plan,” Post said. “The rest wanted a traffic signal.”
DOT engineers told residents at that meeting the intersection did not qualify for a traffic signal, so one could not be installed. There are federal guidelines regulating which intersections qualify for signals, in an effort to keep traffic patterns consistent throughout the country.
The intersection in question does not meet any of the criteria, engineers told residents.
One of the biggest factors in the site’s rejection, local officials argued, was that traffic counts are low because drivers avoid that intersection in favor of nearby intersections with traffic signals, or they cut through the parking lots of local businesses.
“You can be correct and still not take everything into account,” Cole said. “I think we can take another look at this intersection and take the alternate routes into account. You can also plan to accommodate future changes in use.”
DOT will be reexamining the intersection in September, Cole and Bernhardt said.
Cole, Bernhardt and Trahan then met with McKane to inspect two 18- to 24-inch sinkholes on the Bristol Road in Damariscotta.
One of the sinkholes is on the sidewalk on the northbound side of the road; the other is in the roadway in the southbound lane.
Because the Bristol Road is a state road, the sinkhole on the roadway is definitely the state’s responsibly to fix, Bernhardt said. “It looks like they’ve marked it out to work on already,” he said.
Finding responsibility for the repair of the sinkhole on the sidewalk is somewhat more complicated.
Normally, towns are responsible for maintaining sidewalks. However, construction of new sidewalks qualifies as a capital project, which the state will pay for.
In this case, it appears that drainage issues under the sidewalk may be causing the sinkhole, Bernhardt said.
If this is the case, the sidewalk will need to be removed, the drainage issues resolved and a new sidewalk built. This would qualify as a capital project, and the state would pay for it, Bernhardt said.
More detailed investigation into the cause of the sinkhole is required before this decision can be made, Bernhardt said.
If this project were undertaken, it would not be for several years, Bernhardt told Trahan and McKane.
The group then stopped at a particularly bad stretch of the Biscay Road in Damariscotta on their way to a culvert installation on the same road in Bremen.
The Biscay Road edge the group looked at is heavily washed out where the road goes around a corner near the Colby & Gale building. That section of road is scheduled to be repaved in a few weeks.
“I drove this road last fall, and it hasn’t gotten any better,” Cole said. “I guess we have to do something about it.”
