BOSTON — Great Barrington received $137,310 in Shared Winter Streets and Spaces grants from MassDOT to construct the Old Route 7 Greenway.

 

The shared use path will improve pedestrian and bicycle safety along Route 7/Stockbridge Road, link two community centers, and complete the last link of a 2.5-mile loop of the Fountain Pond State Park/Three Mile Hill trail system.

 

The Shared Winter Streets and Spaces program provides grants as small as $5,000 and as large as $500,000 for municipalities to quickly launch changes for safer walking, biking, public transit, recreation, commerce, and civic activities. These improvements can be intentionally temporary or can be pilots of potentially permanent changes.  MassDOT is particularly focused on projects that respond to the current public health crisis and provide safe mobility for children, for elders, to public transportation, and to open space and parks.

 

Great Barrington received a portion of the $2,805,194.22 MassDOT dispersed in the fourth round of funding from the Baker-Polito Administration’s Shared Winter Streets and Spaces program. The program, which was launched on Nov. 10, provides technical and funding assistance to help Massachusetts cities and towns conceive, design, and implement tactical changes to curbs, streets, and parking areas in support of public health, safe mobility, and renewed commerce, with a special focus on the particular challenges of winter.

 

The awards will provide funding to 17 municipalities and two public transit authorities for 19 projects. 58 percent of the awarded municipalities are designated Environmental Justice communities and 79 percent are considered high-risk for COVID-19 infections.  53 percent of the recipients have never received a Shared Streets and Spaces award before.

 

Since the inception of the program in June of 2020, the Commonwealth has invested $21.1 million in municipal Shared Streets projects.