Northampton Green Streets Audit
Northampton Green Streets Audit
Green Streets Vision and Goals
1. Transportation Vision from Northampton Transportation Policies and repeated with slightly
different language in the Sustainable Northampton Comprehensive Plan:
“It is the intention of the City of Northampton to have a transportation system that
encourages the safe and convenient movement of people and goods. Northampton’s
transportation system must allow for the safe and efficient transportation of goods and
people by automobiles, trucks and other motor vehicles and by bicycle and on foot.
The City’s transportation system should be a multimodal one that provides many
different types of transportation options.” (Emphasis in transportation policies.)
2. Environmental goal from Sustainable Northampton Comprehensive Plan:
“Minimize the impacts of infrastructure systems on environmental resources…encourage
and enforce low impact development designs…include “low impact” and NPDES
drainage improvements concurrent with any pavement management program or project…
ALSO, a goal not specifically including green streets but relevant:
Safeguard and improve the quality of the City’s surface waters to ensure use for safe
public swimming, recreational fishing activities, boating, and drinking
Reason for Assistance
1. Northampton does many of the components of green streets (especially complete streets
approach and to a lesser extent addressing stormwater) but we don’t have a single street we
can call a full green street. We want to move towards this fuller green street approach.
2. Northampton understands many of the components of green streets, but we feel our biggest
gaps are for sites that spatially are extremely tight.
3. Northampton needs to build political consensus, but internally and externally, on the benefits
of green streets, especially as we start retrofitting streets and exploring whether a stormwater
utility makes sense for the City.
4. Northampton does a great job of ensuring stormwater control (both quality and quantity) in
suburban areas. We do not do as good a job in urban areas where real estate is limited and
we don’t want to lose development potential that we need for a pedestrian friendly urban
critical mass.
5. Northampton understands the qualitative benefits of green streets measure but we need more
quantitative performance data.
Existing Green Street Implementation Tools
Implementation tools approved and available
Northampton Subdivision regulations:
o www.ecode360.com/NO2226 and then open Chapter 290
DEP Stormwater Handbook
o www.mass.gov/dep/water/laws/policies.htm and scroll down to stormwater
City Stormwater regulations:
o www.ecode360.com/NO2226 and then open Chapter 281
City of Northampton Transportation Policies:
o www.northamptonma.gov/opd/uploads/listWidget/2552/Northampton%20Transportat
ion%20Plan--policies.pdf
Sustainable Northampton Comprehensive Plan:
o www.northamptonma.gov/uploads/basicContentWidget/5763/SustainableNorthampto
nPlanFinal.pdf
Northampton wetlands ordinance
o www.ecode360.com/NO2226 and then open Chapter 337
Design tools available for use in community
Northampton does not have a single street that we can call an integrated green street. We do,
however, have many of the components on city streets retrofitted by the City, new streets built by
developers, and public and private parking lots and developments regulated by the City.
Infiltration Strategies
Rain Gardens—none on city streets. We have rain gardens/bio retention on some projects (e.g.,
the City’s new senior center and the new private L-3 Keo facility). We do have a problem with
snow being plowed into these areas.
Curb and Gutter Elimination—none on city streets.
Vegetated swales—Many private parking lots, a small section on North Farms Road
Infiltration trenches—Recently reconstructed Conz Street and new subdivision Musante Drive.
Stormwater planters—none on city streets.
Stormwater curb extensions—none on city streets.
Vegetated filter strips—very extensive (for 40 years now) between every development in the city
and wetlands. Applies to all new projects and reconstruction of existing projects.
Tree box filters—none
Riparian buffers—very extensive (for 40 years now) for every project along rivers. Applies to
all new projects and reconstruction of existing projects.
Surface Treatments
Permeable paving—none on city facilities currently. Some private projects (e.g., Microcal
parking spaces). A new city recreation Area (Florence Fields) will use this for overflow parking.
All our examples are from permeable block pavers. We do not have any permeable asphalt or
concrete and have concerns about sand and maintenance needs.
High-albedo pavement—none deliberately. For design and durability reasons we have been
pushing concrete (highly reflective) for downtown and urban sidewalks.
Recycles materials—none. The state rail trail uses recycled glass aggregate but, because the
glass works its way to the surface, this has widely been viewed as a failure and makes new
efforts limited. A few plastic structures use recycled content but that has not been a deliberate
choice.
Other Opportunities
Sand and organic filters—none used as a traditional sand filter
Soil amendments—limited use on streets (Conz Street infiltration swale is only example we can
think of). Used very extensively in drainage retention ponds to increase infiltration rates and
catch silt and fines.
Inlet protection devices—used for every construction project. Unless stormceptors are included
in this category, which are widely used, not used after construction phase. Artificial wetlands are
generally used between new stormwater outlet structures and wetlands and waterways.
Preservation of natural areas—The city is extremely aggressive, purchasing over 0.5% of the city
as natural open space every year.
Road dieting—Some limited efforts on the ground (e.g., Conz Street narrowed lanes). We are
working on much more aggressive lane drops on Main Street and King Street but are still at the
conceptual phase.
Green parking design—Every public and private parking lot above certain thresholds is very
aggressive about sidewalks and tree planting. Stormwater runs the range from innovative to
traditional curbs and detention ponds. Zoning allows parking lots to be covered with PV but so
far no takers.
Native vegetation—required and used for street trees and many drainage facilities.
Alternative streets design—We have a complete streets policy and follow aggressively. Some
great successes (e.g. Elm Street) some projects underway and being improved (e.g. South Street).
A long way to go but strong commitment and clear policy. One roundabout built and two under
design.
Community’s Current Green Street Projects
No existing green streets. We are sending examples of green street components in Northampton.
Listing and maps/aerials
Photographic documentation of existing efforts and site context
TO BE SENT UNDER SEPARATE COVER
List of potential future Green Street projects
Potential sites for EPA Green Streets workshop
North Street (about to undergo full depth reconstruction)
o North Street at Market Street
o North Street at Bridge Street Cemetery
Typically, we do one full depth construction of a city street every year or two. At that point
we have a chance to both make the street into a complete street and to improve drainage and
green components. We are always site constrained and attempt to work within our existing
right of way, and our focus on adding sidewalks and often bicycle lanes makes it even harder
to add green components. We are happy to reduce lane width (or standard is 11’ lanes and
will consider 10.5’ lanes) but many of our streets are already at this width and almost all are
only two lane roads, so road dieting opportunities are limited to our major arterials.
North Street is a neighborhood street that carries a fair amount of traffic between our
downtown and our industrial park. It is a perfect example of a typical full depth
reconstruction project.
North Street has sidewalks on one side, but we want to add them on the second side. Within
the existing right-of-way we don’t see a lot of opportunities. The only road diet area is the
intersection of North and Market, where there are some opportunities (although IF the city
did a mini-roundabout here even that would not exist).
We hope that this will inform our thinking for future reconstructions.
Main Street
o City Hall, Crackerbarrel Alley/Crafts Avenue area
Main Street (Route 9) is the heart of our pedestrian vibrant downtown. Main Street, along
with King Street and Locus Street, represents the best example we have for road dieting. We
are interested in going from two lanes in each direction to one lane in each direction with
turn pockets and stacking at intersections. With turn pockets and stacking there are not that
many areas for road dieting and we may use many of those opportunities to extend the areas
of diagonal parking (currently about 50% of the street is diagonal) AND possible to develop
a new bus transit pulse point in the center of the city.
The focus for this workshop is the area where we think we can do some road dieting and
create a new streetscape park with green drainage opportunities. We have already done a
transportation charrette with Nelson/Nygaard and are fairly comfortable with the amount of
real estate we will be recapturing.
We hope this will inform our thinking on this site and be an example of other pavement to
parks efforts we are thinking about.
Moser Street (not as model of retrofit but as discussion about how subdivision regulations
can require more)
Moser Street is a new residential subdivision street in a dense mixed use development at a
former state mental hospital one mile from downtown.
Moser Street was privately developed following our subdivision regulations and dedicated to
the City. The section we want to talk about for the workshop will be developed for dense
single family bungalow development (40’ to 60’ of frontage each). The site has excellent
transportation features (concrete sidewalks on both sides of the road, curb extensions at
crosswalks, raised crosswalks, and granite curbs so that the road can be narrow but let us
plow right to the edge without destroying the curbs), but while it has some good drainage
features it is certainly not LID and we would love to explore what opportunities we could
have had to do better.
We hope that this will help us develop new improved subdivision regulations.
South Street (road diet opportunities)
o Lyman to Revell
South Street is a major arterial (Route 10) that is also the front door to a residential
neighborhood. It is far wider than we would like and someday we will do aggressive road
dieting, but that cost is beyond us right now. One possibility, however, when we do road
dieting is to create cycle tracks, so the actual amount of asphalt real estate that can be
reclaimed may be relatively small.
South Street has bicycle lanes, which we are about to retrofit and create more aggressive
separation from the street (but not a true cycle track).
Maps/aerials of each site (jpegs)
Photo of each site showing site and context (jpeg)
TO BE SENT UNDER SEPARATE COVER