School Street Intersection Plan Estimated to Cost $530,000

It has been almost a year since the  to conduct a study of the School Street intersection, but last night Department of Public Works Director John Westerling and the design engineers from WorldTech Engineering presented a plan before the Board of Selectmen last night.

The design calls for a traffic light to be added to the intersection allowing traffic turning on to West Main Street a safer opportunity to merge with traffic.

According to a study by the designers more than 1000 cars travel from Upton toward 495 every morning during the peak hours, these cars are joined by 300 or so coming off School Street.

As the intersection is designed now, traffic on School Street has a stop sign while traffic on West Main flows freely through the intersections. This has lead to 24 reported crashes in the intersection over the past five years, about half of them were crashes involving a car turning on to the street colliding with a vehicle that is traveling straight through the intersection.

The plans also include creating a left-turn lane on West Main Street in both directions at the intersection. This would eliminate the back up caused by the narrow road when cars need to wait for a break in oncoming traffic to turn safely.

The designers said the construction will cost roughly $530 thousand to complete but said that once construction is underway it should be complete within six to eight months allowing minimum traffic disruptions.