Traffic Jams | Framingham moves ahead with plans to revamp traffic patterns downtown in hopes of revitalizing business
Photo/Brandon Butler
The roundabout in downtown Framingham pictured above was originally designed for traffic volume of about 16,000 cars per day. Volume today is upwards of 29,000.
Framingham has its fair share of traffic, especially downtown.
On the southern side of downtown a “Y” shaped intersection leads into a small roundabout that was originally designed to carry about 16,000 cars per day. It now handles more than 29,000.
Add in pedestrians attempting to cross streets with no signals and you have a recipe for traffic disaster.
On the other end of downtown sits the intersections of Route 126, or Concord Street, and Route 135, an east-west thoroughfare. At that intersection is a set of commuter and freight train tracks with traffic blocking signals that descend 62 times each day, bringing cars to a halt along the main stretch of downtown.
“It causes total gridlock,” said Framingham Town Administrator Julian Suso, of the current roadway design downtown. He estimates that about two and a half hours per day are spent in Framingham with a train running through the downtown.
There is no one panacea to making Framingham’s downtown the cultural and civic hub town officials and local business owners want it to be. But last month the Board of Selectmen allocated about $7 million to replace the roundabout, improve the streetscapes and ease traffic flow.
Baby Steps
It’s what Selectman Dennis Giombetti calls the first step in a multi-year, multi-million dollar revitalization project for Framingham’s downtown, one they hope will see continued investments by cultural organizations, state officials, businesses and outside investors in the coming years.
“You’ve got to start somewhere, and that’s what we’re doing with this ($7 million project),” Giombetti said.
In 2005 Giombetti helped create the Downtown Rail Crossing Study Committee, which worked with engineering and consulting firm The Beta Group of Lincoln, R.I., to assemble a long-term plan for the future of downtown Framingham.
Officials wanted to study how to attract mixed-use commercial and residential investments to the area and how to get more people to live and work in the downtown.
Quickly the group agreed something needs to be done with the railroad crossing intersection.
Any work on the 126-135 intersection, however, will be costly, time consuming and extremely complicated.
Ideas have ranged from constructing a bridge that trains would travel over to rerouting traffic around the downtown area. Engineers continue to study what the best option will be moving forward.
But just as important, Giobetti said, is improving the aesthetics of Framingham. Making the town look nice will encourage investment.
Street Level Perspective
Dennis Osiro, assistant manager at TD Bank on Concord Street in Framingham, agrees.
The train and the roundabout should be fixed, but the biggest issue for business owners in the downtown, he said, is the overall feel and aesthetics.
“We’ve lost customers just due to the look of downtown Framingham,” Osiro said. “All it needs is an uplifting look, something that draws people in.”
Osiro said a “facelift” for the downtown could go a long way.
That’s where the board of selectmen’s vote to allocate $7 million comes in.
Plans for the money, which come from a combination of soon-to-expire federal earmarks and state funding for road projects, will lay new bricks in the sidewalks, plant new trees along the main strip of downtown and remove the dangerous roundabout located directly in front of Town Hall.
It’s what Framingham Community And Economic Development Director Alison Steinfeld called the building blocks to future investments.
Downtown Framingham cannot compete with commercial hubs on Route 9, like the nearby Natick Collection, she argues.
What the downtown can do, however, is create a cultural identity and character that attracts residents and the thousands of workers in Framingham to the downtown area.
The first step to do that is to improve the “fundamentals” of traffic flows and pedestrian safety.
“The downtown should be a focus of our town, it has been for such a long time,” Steinfeld said. “But downtowns are different now from what they use to be, so we need to find that competitive advantage and we need to remove impediments to future investments.”
That advantage the town can embrace, Steinfeld says, are the cultural entities.
In or near downtown sit the Danforth Museum of Art, the Framingham History Center, the Framingham Public Library and The Amazing Things Arts Center, among other cultural centers.
According to an economic impact study that about a dozen local cultural entities sponsored by Carlisle & Co. of Concord, those four organizations, along with two others, already have a combined budget of more than $6.3 million. The indirect economic impact, through visitor spending money elsewhere in town totals an estimated $11.4 million. More than 22,000 out-of-county visitors go to one of the cultural centers each year.
Creative Economy
And these groups are starting to make investments. The Framingham Historical Society recently secured 50-year leases on three downtown-area buildings and the Danforth Museum is looking to do the same with theirs. Securing a long-term commitment to remain in the area will allow the organizations to attract donors, apply for grants and make improvements.
But the long-term plan for Framingham isn’t just about embracing the arts.
That 2005 study group also called for creating mixed-use commercial and residential housing, increasing parking and branding the town as a cultural hub.
Steinfeld has her eye on one particular piece of property overlooking Farm Pond, a body of water adjacent to the downtown area.
She envisions mixed-use development and housing opportunities overlooking the waterfront with pedestrian bridges connecting the downtown to the new waterfront area.
Combined with improvements to the railroad crossing intersection at Route 135, Steinfeld called the long-term vision a “planner’s dream.”
One important piece to doing that, however, is to work with CSX, the freight operator, to consolidate and relocate some of the 200 acres of freight rail yards that are scattered at three sites around the downtown, including at the rail yard along Farm Pond.
Business owners in downtown are skeptical, but supportive of the overall efforts to improve downtown.
Fernando Castro, a Brazilian native who has owned Income Tax Plus in downtown Framingham for 16 years, said anything that attracts business to the downtown is welcome. But he said downtown doesn’t need more buildings, it needs more people.
He said the strong Brazilian community that owns many of the businesses in the downtown area are only loosely affiliated. Better programs to unite the ethnics groups could create a better sense of community.
“You can’t just put as many buildings downtown as you want if you don’t have some way to attract the people,” he said. “It would be a waste.”
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