Repaving of the busy Cumberland Mills triangle will start up in April with all improvements wrapped up by October.

With new traffic signals already installed, the focus of the project at the three intersections is safety, said Public Services engineer Katherine Kelley.

“The whole point of this project is to improve traffic flow and make it safer for pedestrians and commuters that use these intersections daily,” Kelley said. “Paving the Cumberland Mills triangle will help better delineate the new striping pattern set out by the signal project that will be fully operational this year.”

The last time maintenance was done on the intersections was in 2014, Kelley said.

The repaving portion of the project will cost the city roughly $430,000. A state funding match will cover the rest of the $870,000 total cost.  Coastal Road Repair of Westbrook is conducting the work.

Costs may rise, Kelley said, but the current price is a “pleasant surprise” because it was expected to be hundreds of thousands of dollars higher.

“It’s hard to say what the prices are expected at this point due to the rising costs of supplies due to the pandemic.  We have been experiencing at least a 30% increase in construction costs,” Kelley said.

The state has targeted the intersections for improvements since 2005.

Between 2016 and 2019 there have been 81 crashes in the three intersections, according to DOT statistics. 

“We had a pedestrian death on the Main Street side in the early 2000s,” City Engineer Eric Dudley previously said.

An average of 15,275 vehicles travel on Main Street per day, 9,783 on Cumberland Street, 16,467 on Harnois Avenue and 9,094 on Warren Avenue.

The free-flowing traffic from Cumberland and Main often caused long traffic lines and fender benders in the mornings and evenings, Dudley said.