Good evening.

Hello again to some and welcome to others who we haven't had the pleasure to involve in this process with us for the city of Middletown.

Together with me tonight is uh Rima Abisad, who's with us from Tia Johnson from CDM Smith on our public information side.

We have Balen Michelis, uh, Kyle Burnham and Anna Jermaine, um, who got us all to be set up even better tonight.

We got better technology tonight than we did Tuesday, so you'll appreciate that when it comes to the presentations.

Also, our partners on this project as well.

Uh VHB with us tonight, uh, Joe Boscas and Dan Amstes.

Um, they'll be part of our presentation.

Um the team was hired um as a dual team because we wanted to make sure we had enough bench steps to handle four very detailed corridors that have a lot going on.

So we're happy to have them on our team, and as you'll see tonight, they did a great job on kind of going through some of the concepts we're going to show you tonight.

Um, I'll do this a little bit more briefly than we did last time as far as getting into the prioritization discussions.

Um, the purpose of tonight's meeting is a continuation of what we did earlier this year under the Safe Streets and Roads for All program.

It's a planning and demonstration grant that the city of Middletown acquired to advance safety on four corridors.

Newfield Street, um, Washington Street and um South Mean Street Route 17 and Saybrook

Road.

Um with us tonight from the city as well is uh Mayor Karvaskowski also Marquez and um Chief Costa is not with us tonight, but he's been heavily involved as part of that.

Want to also recognize we've had some great partners on our project advisory committee, the PAC, as we call it, ranging from Connecticut DOT to the River COG members.

We've been heavily engaged when uh with John from the Jonas Center when it comes to like communications and also with the River Valley Transit and CT transit as well to make sure that we're capturing all the users in the corridor.

So far, it's been a very collaborative and positive experience.

We've got a lot of great local feedback.

This is a lot of public input so far, both in the earlier meetings we had, which really informed a lot of what we're going to talk to you about tonight because some of that feedback actually changed where we thought we were gonna go a little bit.

And it brought us some insight of what's happening outside these corridors, which was critically important to understand that our improvements can't just be at one intersection, they're kind of more holistic when it comes to this area.

Um did our introductions already.

Um just kind of refresh again.

We've um we've done the kind of the study again, and we'll go forward in a minute.

Um, just refresh again so that those who don't know the program will talk about it a little bit.

Talk about how we got to prior project prioritization, um, and then we'll get into the good stuff, which is the alternatives we're gonna talk to you about tonight.

And then we'll give a chance for question and answer, and then we'll talk about what the next steps are in our process with this grant and the funding and where we hope to go with implementation.

So

once again, uh before quarters, about total of about 12 miles in length, um, running from kind of really out of the heart of the Middletown coming out of uh Main Street initially, um, and then spirit kind of spy spidering away from the downtown area on all the arterial roads that feed into the city.

We got Route 66, Washington Street, Newfield Street Route 3, which connects to Cromwell.

Um, you've got Route 17 that runs back down toward the uh uh Middlefield and South Main Street, and then you've got um Main Street Extension and Saybrook Road.

Um, the one non-DOT road here, but it does have a critical connection point with the off-ramp for Route 17 coming off of Route 9.

Um Tuesday night we focused on um uh Washington Street and Newfield Street.

Tonight our focus is going to be on South Main Street and Saybrook Road, Main Street Extension.

Um by all means, we're happy to talk about all of them.

We've got the some more information, we have information we can talk about.

Um we did this to kind of help divide the neighborhoods a little bit and give some time.

Um there's a lot to talk about, so one meeting was a little too much to get everybody's uh kind of involvement.

Um, but again, we're here to talk about all of them, but our focus tonight is going to be on um the kind of the southern half of the city and these two corridors.

Um

just to kind of recap again.

Um we had identified project goals uh of the project to improve safety and access for all users.

Um it's a safety-funded program.

We're looking to look at vulnerable users.

Um I think all of us during our investigations, our field work have identified every bit of range of users from recreational to commuters to ambulatory to wheelchair to scooters, to you name it, everything we've seen to dog walkers and joggers.

You know, you've got the range of all the users in the corridors, uh, which really is provides really a great platform for for the some of the recommendations we hope to implement because you have the users here.

Some cities and towns don't really have a robust um bike pad and other users in their in their areas.

Middletown does, and I think you're ready for those kind of improvements that like New Haven has and other cities have that really just starts to embrace the population.

Um that leads into like the kind of identifying what the challenges are, and we'll talk about that a little bit with the areas we focused on.

Um, and then also getting into feasibility of these improvements and complete streets principles that are applied to these corridors.

Coordination with DOT is critical as they are the owner of three of these corridors.

Um traffic signals are also managed and oversought by DOT and their OSTA.

So we want to make sure that anything we're doing here is actually in compliance with not just Connecticut DOT, Ash Dow FHWA.

This is a federal grant, so we've got certain requirements we have to make sure that we track.

Um back in the earlier part of this year, we had some really great informative meetings with the public.

Um, and this is kind of what we heard.

Um a lot more discussion about crossing improvements.

There's a lot of difficult places to cross, even impossible to cross in some areas and not too safe.

Um lighting was another option that needed to be improved in certain areas.