BATH

The city has received grants for downtown accessibility improvements, it was learned Thursday.

The state Department of Transportation and the Federal Transit Administration have issued the awards, which amount to $127,000.

Andrew Deci, Bath’s director of planning and development, said today that ramps and “bumpouts” will be built — probably next spring — along four downtown streets.

“I’m really proud of this project,” Deci said. “Bath is a pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly city, and now it will be an accessible community.”

City residents, city staff and bicycle/pedestrian committees have, over the past two years, worked together to identify and mitigate accessibility issues in the downtown. An accessibility audit and other meetings led to an Americans with Disabilities Act plan to remove barriers for mobility-impaired residents.

“It represents citizens identifying a problem within the downtown, addressing it to the city and coming up with a solution,” Deci said.

The DOT will build handicapped ramps on four streets. Bumpouts on the sidewalks will allow for some of them, Deci said.

“They will reduce the distance pedestrians have to cross, slow traffic and make pedestrians more visible,” Deci said.

The four areas on the list are:

— The intersection of Front and Centre streets.

— The Tunnel, a pedestrian access from the Water Street municipal parking lot to Front Street.

— The corner of Front and Elm streets.

— The corner of Front and Centre streets.

The New Freedom Access program is a federally-funded, state-administered program that seeks to improve access to transit for people with disabilities. In Maine, 13 municipalities submitted 42 project requests, and the DOT competitively selected 21 projects. Each municipality was awarded at least one project.

The projects will remove physical and safety barriers for people with disabilities so that they can access employ- ment, health care and other services using existing bus services within their communities.

Since Bath administers the City Bus service, an FTA-funded transportation system, the city was an eligible applicant and applied for what amounts to four projects. It received them all, which will increase accessibility along Front Street and to the City Bus.

Project engineering will begin in the coming month, with construction to start next year. The DOT will provide the design consultant and manage the construction contracts. No local funds are dedicated to this project.