Shrewsbury Selectmen review Route 20 Corridor turning restrictions

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Shrewsbury Selectmen review Route 20 Corridor turning restrictions
Photo by/Dakota Antelman
A car passes the intersection of Route 20 and South Street.

By Melanie Petrucci, Senior Community Reporter

SHREWSBURY – Town Manager Kevin Mizikar briefly reviewed possible turning restrictions along the Route 20 corridor with Selectmen at their meeting April 13.

He specifically focused on the intersection between the eastbound lanes of Route 20 and South Street, where South Street continues towards Westborough.

“We have been working with MassDOT and Representative [Hannah] Kane on the development of the Master Plan of the Route 20 Corridor that seeks to provide, first and foremost, general traffic safety and improvements and also ready the corridor for further economic development,” Mizikar said.

He proposed that the Board of Selectmen accept and adopt the traffic safety recommendations that are provided in the Master Plan and to ask MassDOT to prioritize prohibiting left turns from South Street onto Route 20 westbound.

“This is a continued trouble spot with traffic, and it’s very difficult to see coming out of South Street…” he commented.

Mizikar added that MassDOT has asked that the town solicit proposal feedback which will be done through the town website and social media. That feedback will be shared at the Board’s next meeting on Tuesday, April 27. 

A vote on this proposal was tabled until after public comments have been reviewed.

This comes just a matter of weeks after a school bus collided with a tractor trailer on Route 20. Crash reports later showed that incident, as well as a similar accident involving students in 2019, both happened as vehicles tried to take left turns from side streets onto Route 20.

“I am appreciative of the Board’s action, which stems from the findings in the Route 20 Corridor Master Plan Report that showed that vehicles entering from unsignalized intersections experience more crashes in the corridor, one of which was Route 20 at South Street (South),” Kane wrote in a statement to the Community Advocate after the April 13 Selectmen meeting.

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