Middlebury’s Middle Road housing project goes far toward advancing the Walk-Bike Council of Addison County’s goals to encourage walking and biking and the town’s goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions related to transportation with needed housing that helps us be less car dependent. We believe the “Missing Middle” development will attract the increasing number of families using e-cargo bikes to drop off kids at schools and childcare centers and becoming one-car families as well as professionals seeking car-free lifestyles.

We support providing passage easements and extending sidewalks as much as possible as well as preparing for micro-transit and circulator bus stops. We applaud the addition of onsite bike storage in a bike room and assume there’d be bike parking outside for visitors to the restaurant and apartments (U-loop racks) and e-vehicle charging capacity and good outdoor lighting (down flowing). We need to consider how bikes and other rideable devices flow so as not to congest sidewalks at peak times. We support the needed scale and limited parking to one car per unit. Tenants know this in advance of lease signing, as do other tenants limited in this way in other downtown locations, like the new apartments in front of the food co-op. Will there be parking infringements to manage? Even so, it’s better to have it and work toward its reduction than no new housing and leaving the parcel as a blighted parking lot.

Relief from traffic congestion is not going to come from reducing the scale of this development or moving it out further, where walking and biking could be harder, but from the reality of Route 7’s road design and volume. We could relieve this during school drop off and pick up in many ways, from encouraging walking, biking and bussing to using remote drop offs and pick-ups and delaying non-essential trips to avoid peak traffic times (7:45-8:15 a.m., noon, 2:45-3:30 p.m.) We could also direct traffic to avoid bypassing onto Middle Road from the proposed Stewart’s replacing Jolley’s, directing it to the signaled light at Hannaford’s.

I biked through the area to visualize navigating by bus, foot and bike. I liked the better-aligned crosswalks at Hannaford South and Deerfield into MUMS. We encourage towns to use the more visible reflective zebra hatchings to mark crosswalks rather than vertical ladder stripes and hope for this design on Middle Road. Adding color to ladder ones helps, as we did downtown, but these are not as reflective in dark hours as zebra hatchings. Posting with crosswalk flags or rapid flashing beacon lights helps, as we have downtown. Many use Lacrosse Drive on car, foot and bike as a cut through to the Rec Center and fields on Creek Road and vice versa. A three-way stop there could aggravate traffic flow, being so close in proximity to crosswalks, but we wonder if we need the traffic calming that this would offer. We’ll monitor this corridor as the school year starts.

As I pedaled, I wondered where we see bikes riding, especially the increasing number of e-bikes, scooters and motorized devices used by students, staff and residents along Middle Road, including MUMS and the Residence at Otter Creek. The Walk-Bike Council wonders what the town’s plan is for painting the repaved Middle Road. Will bikes “share the road” and the road be stenciled with “sharrows” or will it be striped in a “road diet” approach, indicating wider shoulders when these are possible? Many of our roads don’t allow for shoulders or shoulder widening, but when they do, we should tighten the traffic lane, which calms traffic, and widen the shoulder the way repainted fog lanes do on sections of Weybridge Street. We understand this is the purvey of the town and not the developer and architect, but now is the time to consider it.

When I train fifth graders on bike skills, we do a practice ride from Mary Hogan to MUMS through Buttolph via crossing Route 7 at Danyow on to Middle Rd. We bike on the Middle Road sidewalk as it is safer than the street in the same direction as traffic, yielding to pedestrians and stopping at intersections to signal. We return on the street, staying right and riding in the same direction as traffic to Lacrosse Drive, where we cross and practice “sharing the road” by claiming the lane and going around a rotary and crossing to the Rec Center. From there, we ride the sidewalk up to Route 7 and stay on the sidewalk, riding against traffic, which is not ideal, but safer for navigating a large group with vulnerable riders than being on the other side to use a shoulder that is wide enough but terrifies kids with fast-passing cars and trucks, especially on inclines. We cross at Mary Hogan Dr. It’s not ideal as we want bikes to use shoulders and flow in the same direction as traffic and not startle pedestrians and do our best to deal with the limits of our road geography and speed limits while we work on safer passage through the school zone. E-bikes are a whole new world to manage, and we will continue to educate on their regulations and safe use in this corridor, especially for those under 16 who are not permitted to ride the faster ones. E-bikes are well described by Vermont’s statewide walk-bike organization Local Motion at https://www.localmotion.org/ebikes.

We hope many see and appreciate the willingness of the developer and Middlebury-based VIA architecture to adjust design to meet community needs for a safe and healthy town. We appreciate when efforts are made to improve road design for safe walking and cycling when roads are repaved and hope many will practice navigating Middle Road on foot and bike before the start of school on Aug. 27 toward relieving traffic congestion during peak times.

Laura Asermily

Middlebury