Beaumont is a north/south road that goes straight to Hull St., at NNHS, so there’s a lot of vehicular traffic both a.m. and p.m. At its south end, directly across the street (across the CR and Comm Ave) is the War Memorial, and then across from Homer is the public library. Also to the east is the footpath that connects Beaumont with Walnut. Together, you have many people of all ages walking here year round. Drivers use Lakeview Ave as a cutoff to and from Walnut St (next intersection to the east) to avoid the signal at Walnut and Comm so Lakeview also gets vehicular traffic all day, mostly coming down the hill and ending up at this juncture. Then you have all the people walking, running, and bicycling east and west on the Carriage Road.
I had gone to Traffic Council - the meeting was January 2017 - to get a stop sign approved before the CR on Beaumont before the CR (Councilor Norton docketed it for us, this was even before Andreae was our City Councilor), (along with other locations) as the goal was to have consistency of stop signs before the Carriage Road. The police officer at the time nixed the idea of the stop sign on Beaumont before the CR because he thought that having one stop sign at Lakeview, one stop sign before the CR, and then one before Comm Ave was unfair to drivers, and thus the measure failed. This late 2021 exploration of possible locations roundabouts in Newton could give us an opportunity to revisit this, now 4 years later and more foot traffic, more bicycling, and all sorts of motor vehicle traffic.
Soon after the stop sign request was turned down, John Pelletier suggested a roundabout here back. See his drawing directly below.
Another problem there concerns a private school bus that runs WB along Comm Ave in the afternoon, and stops before Beaumont to drop kids off. Parents drive and park their cars all around that intersection, commonly blocking the Walnut foot path that runners and pedestrians need.
This might be our opportunity to create a small roundabout there to promote complete streets and safety (then remove that parking on the side there…). In John’s drawing, there’s plenty of room for a small roundabout (see below). Where he placed the roundabout is 61ft width, and 118 where Lake and Beaumont meet up. At this point we were discussing a better curb cut there, for both pedestrians and bicyclists, and relocating the pedestrian crossing.
Parents parked:
and
