Busy intersection getting revamped
Crossing of Diamond Hill and Mendon roads will be widened
WOONSOCKET – The very first letter Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt ever wrote as a freshman House lawmaker in 2007 was a plea to the state Department of Transportation to get moving on safety and traffic-flow improvements at one of the city’s most heavily traveled crossings – the junction of Mendon and Diamond Hill roads.
To be fair, she wasn’t the first – a raft of local officials and state lawmakers, including Sen. Roger Picard (D-Dist. 20, Woonsocket-Cumberland) and his predecessor, the late Sen. Roger Badeau, had picked up the pen to stump for the road work before her.
Now the $3.2 million project is about to come to fruition, with construction slated to begin in May, according to Baldelli-Hunt and RIDOT.
“This actually started when the plazas were filled years ago – that’s how long it took to get to this point,” said Baldelli Hunt. “The good news is we’ve gotten to this point.”
DOT spokesman Charles St. Martin said the agency recently awarded a contract for the job to North Kingstown-based T. Miozzi Inc. for construction, which represents about $1.5 million of the work.
City officials say the job calls for converting a pie-shaped wedge of land in the northeastern quadrant of the intersection into a new travel lane for right turns only. That means travelers heading northbound on Mendon Road will have three travel lanes instead of two approaching the intersection.
The middle lane will be used only for vehicles that aren’t turning as they cross Diamond Hill Road, passing toward Paine Road across the state line into Bellingham. The left northbound lane will be used by motorists for left turns only.
h Baldelli-Hunt says the improvehments will decrease the backups behind the traffic lights on either side of Mendon Road because motorists coming toward each other from opsposite directions won’t have to vie dfor yield rights when one of them is -turning.
“You’re always playing a little bit of a game of chicken over here,” she said at the soon-to-be construction zone Tuesday.
The job also calls for a new traffic signals to match up with the direction-restricted travel lanes. The signal will be propped on new steel armature. t “Right now it’s just lights hanging off a wire,” said St. Martin.