TYLin New England Traffic Engineering Director Tom Errico explains a suggested alternative traffic pattern at the intersection of Academy Hill and Mills Road at a Newcastle Select Board meeting on Monday, Feb. 10. (Johnathan Riley photo)
The Newcastle Select Board heard an engineering firm’s recommendations to improve to two major intersections during its meeting Monday, Feb. 10.
The presentation was the result of close to a year of work by the Village Partnership Initiative, a collaboration between the town, Maine Department of Transportation, Wright-Pierce, an engineering firm based in Topsham; and TYLin, a civil engineering firm based in Falmouth; to study the intersections of River Road and Main Street and Academy Hill Road and Mills Road.
The group sought feedback from residents and other interested parties through a series of meetings, public workshops, and a community survey while also conducting traffic studies and reviewing safety data.
Lincoln County Regional Planning Commission Executive Director Emily Rabbe, who is helping with communication between the organizations in the Village Partnership Initiative, said the Newcastle traffic redesigns presented at the Feb. 10 meeting had three intentions.
“One, to better organize and calm traffic flow,” she said. “The second was to support a pedestrian friendly village district, and the third was to add on street parking to encourage commercial and residential development in this study area.”
The board did not take any action on the recommendations provided by Wright-Pierce at the Feb. 10 meeting.
The decision whether to move forward with redesigning the intersections ultimately rests with the town. Newcastle Town Manager Kevin Sutherland said if the select board doesn’t recommend pursuing of any of the concepts to the DOT, the project will not move forward.
Rabbe said the recommendations, as well as alternative options presented in previous meetings, are all being reviewed by the Maine Department of Transportation.
“They’re doing a very thorough review by a number of different departments within DOT and we will provide that feedback back to Wright-Pierce and they will make further changes to the plan,” she said.
She expects to receive additional comments and refinements from their engineers in the coming weeks, which she’ll communicate to the town and Wright-Pierce engineers to organize further input sessions.
Based on the results from a traffic study in July 2024, engineers from Wright-Pierce and TYLin presented residents in October 2024 with realistic redesigns of where River Road merges onto Main Street and the intersection of Mills Road and Academy Hill Road.
From the data collected by TYLin, Wright-Pierce developed five options for potential redesigns: two for the River Road intersection and three for the Academy Hill and Main Street intersection.
The options were presented again during the Feb. 10 meeting, after which Wright-Pierce recommended traffic flow changes for each intersection based on public feedback.
Lincoln County Regional Planning Commission Executive Director Emily Rabbe opens the presentation about possible intersection reconfigurations at the Newcastle Select Boards Monday, Feb. 10 meeting. Engineers recommended changes to the River Road and Main Street intersection as well as the Mills Road and Academy Hill Road intersection. The select board did not take any action on the recommendations. (Johnathan Riley photo)
Estimated costs for each option were also discussed. In the third public workshop on Nov. 19, 2024 Maine Department of Transportation Regional Planner Steve Cole said while the roads in discussion are state owned, traffic alteration projects need to be partially funded by the town in which the project is taking place. Cole estimated about 10% of the project’s cost would need to be funded by Newcastle residents, who would consider the question at a town meeting.
At the intersection of River Road and Main Street, engineers recommended a T-intersection instead of a roundabout.
“We ended up recommending the T-intersection because both of these get good traffic flow, and this first option of the T-intersection would be a lot quicker to construct, less complex,” Wright-Pierce Project Engineer Nathan Edwards said.
That intersection is also on a slope. In order to level that area for a roundabout a lot of fill would be needed, increasing the cost of the already expensive option of bringing in a roundabout, Edwards said.
TYLin New England Traffic Engineering Director Tom Errico said reconstructing the River Road and Main Street intersection as a T-intersection wouldn’t lead to much difference in safety but would clean up the current layout, which he said was confusing to those unfamiliar with it.
“It’s not significant, because the same movements basically happen,” Errico said. “I’m a little surprised there aren’t more crashes with that kind of configuration … So we’re trying to clean the geometry a little bit”
The project to install a T-intersection at River Road – estimated to cost $2.9 million – would also include sidewalk improvements from that intersection to the intersection of Academy Hill Road and Mills Road, according to Edwards.
For the Mills Road and Academy Hill Road intersection, Edwards recommended the option with a northbound slip lane from Route 1 and River Road and headed into the Twin Villages.
The four-way stop with a slip lane is similar to the current layout – a three-way stop and two-way slip lane for traffic for north and southbound traffic – but removes the flow option for southbound Damariscotta traffic and would require those driving in that direction to come to a full stop at the intersection and make a left turn.
Errico said the four-way stop with the one-way slip lane showed the most amount of improved efficiency in the traffic study compared to integrating a roundabout or a four-way stop without the slip lane.
The Mills Road and Academy Hill Road intersection has, in the past, been an area with numerous crashes, according to Errico.
“We looked at the safety data, historically, it has been something called a high crash location where there were a number of crashes that were problematic,” he said. “That is not the case right now: right now, it is not a high crash location.”
The estimated cost for this design is approximately $1.35 million.
While the proposed change to the River Road and Main Street intersection garnered little discussion, the engineers’ recommendation for Mills Road and Academy Hill Road drew several comments from the audience.
Newcastle Fire Chief Casey Stevens said he believed the one-way northbound slip lane into the Twin Villages could be problematic for emergency vehicles due to the reduced space.
“In the summertime, coming against stopped vehicles, that’s not always the best thing to try and get around,” he said.
Newcastle resident Rob Hunt, who owns N.C. Hunt Lumber in Jefferson and Damariscotta also expressed concerns about larger vehicles being able to navigate the intersection.
If the project were to move forward, Wright-Pierce suggested sidewalk renovations from the Mills Road and Academy Hill intersection to Stewart Street and from the Damariscotta-Newcastle bridge to the Mills Road and Academy Hill Road intersection.
The Mills Road renovations would include the sidewalk on the southbound lane, adding a sidewalk on the opposite side of the road, and narrowing Mills Road from Stewart Street to the intersection with Academy Hill Road to reduce driver speed.
The cost of the Mills Road sidewalk project is estimated to total $1.5 million, according to Wright-Pierce Senior Project Manager Jan Wiegman. The cost of the sidewalk renovation from the intersection to the start of the Damariscotta-Newcastle bridge is estimated to be $1.64 million.
The total cost to implement the preferred intersection alternatives at both locations and the accompanying sidewalk work is estimated to be $7.4 million, according to Wiegman.
“Whether or not you do it all at once or in pieces, that’s up to the town and DOT with how you want to go forward with these improvements if you chose to do that,” he said.
Attendees fill the meeting room at the Clayton Huntley Jr. Fire Station for a presentation by engineering firms Wright-Pierce and TYLin about possible reconfigurations for two intersections to calm traffic flow while supporting a more pedestrian-friendly downtown area. (Johnathan Riley photo)
