Pleasant St. roundabout comes in well under budget

By Mike Berger

The controversial Pleasant Street roundabout project is substantially completed and has come in well under budget, Town Administrator Bill Friel announced last week. In addition, Canton police said there have been two official accidents, both minor, and three complaints about the new rotary from November 1 to December 12.

Originally approved by selectmen in June at the request of the DPW, the project — which includes a major redesign of the intersection at Pleasant Street, Bolivar Street, and Lincolnshire Drive — was temporarily halted amid a firestorm of criticism from residents, who questioned the need for a roundabout at that location as well as the methodology of the town-commissioned traffic study. Selectmen then held several subsequent hearings on the matter and also sought the input of a third party engineer before opting to move forward with the project in September.

Despite continued criticism from residents, the roundabout is now well in place, with pedestrian signals and greenery being the lone remnants of the project still to be completed, according to Friel.

Deputy Police Chief Helena Rafferty said the two accidents both occurred in the first week of November, which would have been the period when “people were getting used to the new rotary and during the end construction phase.” Police and the DPW have posted yield signs before the rotary as well as speed limit signs indicating a 20-mile-per-hour maximum. They also installed an electronic sign on Pleasant Street from the Stoughton line south measuring an approaching vehicle’s speed.

At the December 16 selectmen’s meeting, Friel reported that the total cost of the roundabout and adjacent repaving of sections of Pleasant Street and Lincolnshire Drive came in at $179,921 — far below the $250,000 estimate — and included $24,570 in construction amendments offered by selectmen. The project is being paid for through one of the selectmen’s mitigation accounts with a portion of the paving being paid for using state roadway funds.

Friel said he does not expect any additional costs associated with the project. All of the greenery will be done in the spring and will be paid for with town beautification funds. The pedestrian signals have been ordered and paid for and are tentatively slated to be installed by the end of February, depending on weather and contractor availability. Friel said whether an additional detour is needed will be left up to the Police Department.

The project did incur some contractor costs, but a lot of the work was done by the DPW. Friel said the reason for the project savings was the “DPW Engineering Division’s ability to make accurate cost estimates consistent with best practices of this type.”

“The DPW did assist with the paving preparation portion,” he said, “which is standard and there we routinely perform the paving preparation functions, street sweeping, catch basin work, etc., depending on the location.”

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