GREENFIELD — Backed by a federal grant, the Franklin Regional Council of Governments (FRCOG) is in the process of developing its own Road Safety Action Plan to serve as a guide for future traffic safety investments.

To inform the plan’s creation, officials with FRCOG, the state Department of Transportation and Kittelson & Associates Inc. convened at the John W. Olver Transit Center on Wednesday to gather public input on road safety problems in the county.

This federal Safe Streets and Roads For All grant was awarded to FRCOG in partnership with the town of Nantucket, the Nantucket Planning & Economic Development Commission and the Martha’s Vineyard Commission. Despite the distance between the communities, FRCOG Transportation Program Manager Beth Giannini explained these groups became partnered applicants because they are all rural municipalities that have similar goals for the grant funding.

“The Franklin Regional Council of Governments as a regional planning agency was one of the eligible applicants to the program, and we joined up with two other rural regional planning agencies in Massachusetts just to submit an application,” Giannini explained. “So it’s Nantucket, Franklin County and Martha’s Vineyard, and because we’re all rural regional planning agencies, we thought it would be a fun and really great way to collaborate, because we all had unique issues, but they’re all more rurally based.”

The federal award for the Safe Streets and Roads For All project was $460,000, which is then combined with a $115,000 match from MassDOT, making for a total of $575,000.

With this federal grant on deck, FRCOG is in the process of developing its own Road Safety Action Plan that is entering the public input phase. The plan will identify problem areas within the county that can then be prioritized for future road safety projects.

At Wednesday’s feedback session, participants were encouraged to engage with printed maps that showed data for crashes, traffic injuries and fatalities from across Franklin County. The statistics were sourced from a technical memorandum dated June 2024, with data collected as part of the MassDOT Open Data Portal from 2018 to 2022.

On these maps, people were encouraged to label problem areas for commuters who are driving, walking, cycling or using public transportation. Giannini said planners wanted to be sure to get input from the people who are interacting with the existing infrastructure as a way to contextualize the statistics.

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“It’s also important for us to hear from people,” she said. “Maybe there wasn’t a crash at a certain location, but maybe somebody had a really close call or there was something where they felt like it was unsafe, like the sight distance wasn’t great. That’s the kind of thing we’re looking at.”

Alex Garbier, a senior engineering associate with Kittelson & Associates Inc., gave a presentation providing more context about the data being used to develop the Road Safety Action Plan. One of the key aspects to remember is simply that where there are more people and vehicles, there are more crashes.

In the data that is mapped in Franklin County, more populated areas like Greenfield, Sunderland, Deerfield, Montague, Shelburne and Orange all saw higher crash frequency and more frequent severe or even fatal crashes. Single-vehicle crashes were the most common type of crash and the most severe and fatal, based on data from 2018 to 2022.

Since the data looks at the entire county and also individual towns and cities, Garbier explained Kittelson & Associates is taking a systemic approach to the data and public feedback for identifying possible safety improvements.

“When something terrible happens, there’s usually 10 other locations that look exactly the same,” Garbier said of the planners’ approach. “So part of the goal here is to work toward collecting information from you all thinking about this more broadly, so then we’re identifying groups of locations [that are experiencing the same problems] and systemic risks that exist, so those can be addressed much more broadly, as opposed to trying to play Whack-a-Mole where no one succeeds and everything feels frustrating.”

To address these high-risk areas, traffic-calming measures, pedestrian safety methods and other types of roadway safety improvements can be pursued, with prioritization outlined in the Road Safety Action Plan. Some of the potential solutions on display on Wednesday included increased signs, lights, roundabouts and raised islands.

Montague Assistant Town Administrator Chris Nolan-Zeller and Montague Town Planner Maureen Pollock were both in attendance to speak with the representatives and provide feedback on the maps. Nolan-Zeller wrote on one of the sticky notes placed on the posterboard maps that both Turners Falls Road and Millers Falls Road in Montague are located in dense residential areas, but they are built to highway standards.

“Cars travel well above posted speed limits and endanger pedestrians and residents,” his note read.

Nolan-Zeller explained these areas aren’t current project zones, but the town has been notified of road safety issues.

“There’s a lot of things that aren’t necessarily on the radar of anybody except for those who live there and the people who we hear from,” Nolan-Zeller said.

Current projects in Montague include Avenue A improvements for pedestrian safety and accessibility in Turners Falls, measures to address speeding and increase pedestrian safety in the village of Montague Center, and a potential roundabout proposed by MassDOT to combat speeding and increase driver, pedestrian and cyclist safety at the intersection where Route 63 meets Route 47 and North Leverett Road. These types of improvements in Montague are some examples of solutions that were presented by Kittelson & Associates that could be considered for other areas of Franklin County.

As the public input period continues, people are encouraged to take a survey that can help guide the Road Safety Action Plan’s creation. The survey can be accessed online at frcog.org/project/franklin-county-safety-action-plan. A second input session will be held virtually on Wednesday, Jan. 15, at 6 p.m.

Erin-Leigh Hoffman can be reached at ehoffman@recorder.com or 413-930-4231.