A picture is worth a thousand words...

Here's a picture from Dan Enos of a school bus and a PeaPod truck trying to pass each other.  The picture is a few years old. "Both vehicles ended up stuck and were there for quite awhile, if I remember correctly they brought another bus in to get the kids stuck on this bus."  What would have happened if another vehicle had come flying around the corner? 

Notes from the December Road Advisory Meeting

About 10 of us attended the Road Advisory Committee's meeting on Thursday December 4th.  We learned that the DPW director is working on a report for the Board of the Selectman in regards to paving Ship Pond Road.  Sid Kashi  (The town's DPW engineer) was in attendance and was able to provide some details.  It sounds like the DPW agrees that it's time to pave Ship Pond Road.  The report that they are working on will outline the necessary steps and request commitment from the board of Selectman before they proceed. The road will have to be widened and drainage easements need to be obtained.  This can get complicated if property owners object.  The Selectman can take the property needed for drainage easements by eminent domain if need be, the DPW needs to know they will before they move forward.  This is exactly what happened on the Valley Road / Roxy Cahoon paving project that the DPW is currently working on.  It sounds like the report will be ready in the next few weeks.  We need to be there when it is brought before the board of Selectman.  Selectman Tony Provenzano was also in attendance at the RAC meeting.  He said it's important for the selectman to see and hear the residents concerns when they make these decisions. The meeting agendas are posted on the town calendar.  I'll watch them and let everyone know when this meeting will take place. In the meantime, if anyone has ideas to help gather support please let me know. I'm trying to contact the Cedarville Steering Committee to ask for their support.  Oh and Sid mentioned that Ship Pond Road is an evacuation route! (obviously a decision made by someone that has never actually seen Ship Pond Road). I was not aware of this, but I think we can leverage that fact as a strong argument for paving it too.   

A follow up email to the RAC

As a follow up on Friday Nov 7,  I sent this email to the RAC...

Thank You for your time and consideration addressing our paving request for Ship Pond Road at the Road Advisory Meeting last night.   I’ve gone back and taken some more accurate measurements of the different sections. I also want to be clear that we are not willing to support a betterment for funding of this improvement.  Ship Pond is a MCSC (Minor Collector of Special Character) and  by definition this is : “Minor Collector – road used by general traffic to connect neighborhoods, or connect a Local Street to a Major Collector, with a traffic count in the range of 200 - 1000 ADT”.   This road supports much more then just the residential traffic.  Asking the residents of this road to support the financial burden of upgrading when so many other Plymouth residents would benefit from the upgrade is not reasonable.   We look forward to discussing this further at the next RAC meeting, at which time we hope to have input from Mr. Beder as well. 

 

Sincerely,

Robyn Risso

 

The East Section of SPR from the existing pavement to OSR  .50 kilometers.

The OSR section where SPR and OSR are merged  .47 kilometers.

The Main Section of SPR  from OSR to the existing pavement  1.44 kilometers.

The West Section of SPR from the existing pavement to Long Pond Road  .58 kilometers.

 

Total Distance = 2.99 kilometers / 9,810 feet / 1.857 miles.

Meeting with the Road Advisory Committee

On Thursday, November 6th we met with the RAC to discuss our petition.   I had already sent them the letter and signatures so we were on their Agenda.  On Friday November 7 I sent this group email to everyone...

Status Update...

Last night we met with the Road Advisory Committee (RAC) asking for their support.  Now we wait for the DPW Directors input.  The DPW is currently paving a section of Rocky Cahoon and Valley roads in South Plymouth.  This project began with about 40 people showing up at a Road Advisory Meeting with a video of their children being bounced around in a school bus. They won the support of the RAC and the Selectman. (Ultimately it is the Selectman that make the decision). I think we too need to be more visible.  A few people did show up at the meeting last night. Thank You!  However, I'm not sure the RAC can understand how important this is to us without a larger presence. The next meeting will be Thursday December 4th at 6:30pm.  PLEASE attend this meeting if you possibly can, if you can't make it, send a representative! The meetings are held at the Cedarville Community Room (behind the Cedarville Fire Station).
Also please feel free to call me anytime 508.224.8788. I'm going to start a blog to keep track of our progress.  I'll post a link to that soon.

Success with Signatures!

 

On October 31, 2104 enough signatures were collected to meet the 75% requirement of the town bylaw.  Only about 60% of the required signatures were obtained for Old Sandwich Road. Unfortunatley many of the abutters on Old Sandwich do not need to access the road so they have little interest in this process.  I was able to send this email update to the Ship Pond Road group.

Status Update...

Thanks to the efforts of  my daughter and son-in-law who did some door to door visits, we now have enough signatures to meet the 75% requirement of the town bylaw.  The next step is to meet with the Road Advisory Committee asking for their support.  PLEASE attend this meeting if you possibly can, the more people that show up, the more likely they are to recommend that this project move forward.  The meeting will be held at the Cedarville Community Room (behind the Cedarville Fire Station) at 6:30pm on Thursday November 6th. Please feel free to call me for more information, and I hope to see you there!

The Letter

In August, 2014  this letter was sent to all abutters of the gravel sections of Ship Pond road.  A similar letter was sent to residents of Old Sandwich Road.