Greenville has been awarded a grant for a year-long process to create a Complete Streets policy, in order to enhance road safety and usability for all road users, including pedestrians and bikers.
The town has been awarded services equal to about $13,500 through the Monadnock Region Complete Street Implementation Grant. The town must contribute $3,853 in an in-kind match, which it plans to do through volunteer hours contributed to the project. Complete Streets is a program that helps towns create standards for improving safety and accessibility for non-drivers, and Town Administrator Tara Sousa said the grant will help the town develop a policy, which is a steppingstone for further grants to actually put improvements into place.
“We applied to undertake that task,” Sousa said. “Once that policy is adopted, there are grants for transportation projects that become open to us, that we wouldn’t otherwise be eligible for.”
Staff from the Southwest Regional Planning Commission will be assisting a town task force, made up of both town staff and members of the community, with putting the policy together for approval by the Select Board next year.
“There’s certainly an element where we’re looking for input from resident users of different types of transportation,” Sousa said.
Southwest Regional Planning Commission staff will meet with the task force for an initial meeting to explain the concept, plus five additional meetings. The task force will create educational handouts regarding Complete Streets with sample policies, create maps of road types, create a list of prioritized projects for Greenville and draft a Complete Streets policy for Greenville with design guidelines.
The task force will also collect crash and speed data for local roads and create surveys for the community to give information on the policy or guidelines they would like to see in town, including information about what they see as barriers to transportation like biking or walking. The task force will also ask residents for their priorities, and learn about what issues students who walk or bike to school might have.
The Southwest Regional Planning Commission will assist the town with temporary improvements or demonstrations based on the identified issues, while the town works toward obtaining grant funding for more-permanent changes. At the end of the process, the commission will also support the town in considering or developing grant applications, including opportunities through the Department of Transportation’s Transportation Alternatives Program or the Monadnock Alliance for Sustainable Transportation, to obtain funds for the projects proposed during the planning phase.
The town is seeking interested residents to join the Complete Streets Task Force. The task force is expected to meet once or twice per month for about a year. The town is seeking individuals with one or more of the following qualifications: individuals with knowledge of Greenville’s roads and safety issues, a parent of school-age children, people who regularly walk or bike in town, individuals with road safety concerns or those interested in improving business and other activity in the village center.
People who are interested should contact Sousa at 603-878-2084 or send email to administrator@greenvillenh.org.
Ashley Saari can be reached at 603-924-7172 ext. 244 or asaari@ledgertranscript.com. She’s on Twitter @AshleySaariMLT.