Work on the high-priority project could begin as soon as this summer and last into the summer or fall of 2013, said Laura Hanson, the city's transportation engineer.

The more than half-mile stretch of North Street will see improvements, from Bates Street to the spot near Walnut Street that it turns into Market Street...

[Hanson] believes the concept residents will likely gravitate towards calls for repaving the road, constructing new sidewalks and improving green space.

This concept also includes narrowing North Street where it intersects with both Lincoln Street and Market Street, and significant crosswalk improvements to make them wider and more visible.

The existing crosswalks would double in width to 16 feet, and two or three "raised" crosswalks are proposed as a way to slow traffic down, similar to those near Jackson Street School...

This plan also calls for the planting of new trees down by Market Street, said Hanson.

Two other concepts will be presented at tonight's meeting. One calls for repaving the street and upgrading the existing sidewalks, instead of constructing new ones. The plan would also improve curbing, pavement markings and have a better defined parking.

The second concept is similar but includes a bike lane on the north side from Bates to Woodmont Road. Hanson said this option "really squeezes the road" and will impact trees and cause utility pole issues in order to make room for the sidewalk.

Our climate is changing. There really isn’t any debate in the scientific community anymore. The scientific community has moved on to solving the problem of what do we do about climate change. One thing we can do is change our preparedness for more intense storms and heavier rainfall. Most of the country has been doing this. Forty-eight states have updated their formulas used to calculate the amount of water that can be expected to flow in streams and rivers during typical and atypical storms. Rhode Island has been working on updating their calculations so that they can become the 49th state. That leaves Massachusetts as the only state not updating its stormwater calculations.

These calculations are used to predict the amount of floodwater a community can expect during an x-year storm (e.g., 50-year storm, 100-year storm, 500-year storm). This can help determine such things as how big a culvert under a road needs to be in order to keep that road from washing out during a storm. Well, Massachusetts has joined the fold, and has started taking steps to become the 50th state to update its stormwater calculations, and if we do say so ourselves, BEAT was the driving force in getting the state to act.

For quite some time BEAT has been asking Massachusetts state agencies to update the state’s 100-year flood calculations. Then in September 2011, the state released its Massachusetts Climate Change Adaptation Report . On page 19 the report states, “By 2050, Boston could experience the current 100-year riverine flood every two to three years on average and, by 2100, the current 100-year riverine flood is expected to occur every one to two years under both the low- and high-emissions scenarios.” Clearly the state recognized that the current 100-year flood, has been occurring much more frequently than its title would suggest. Our climate was changing, but the design of our culverts, bridges, and other infrastructure components were not. When developers came into meetings with plans, they still used the outdated equations for how much rain falls in how many hours to produce the x-year storm – which would result in the x-year flood.

In September, BEAT contacted the United States Geological Survey to say that BEAT was frustrated by planners’ and engineers’ use of the x-year storm as a design standard, when the x-year storm is now occurring much more frequently. We would like to see a new set of values used to determine the size of each of the x-year storms based on either the most recent historical records, or perhaps even better, based on predicted rainfall for the next 100 years...

On January 17th, 2012, Phil Zarriello from USGS emailed to say thank you, BEAT’s efforts appeared to be making a difference...

...Massachusetts has joined with other New England states to analyze precipitation records to update standards.

All of this should go a long way in reducing future damage from severe storms.