On Monday, June 2, at the Williamsburg annual Town Meeting, Article 27: South Main Street Shared Use Path Easements, failed to pass by the required two thirds majority vote. This came as welcome news to South Main Street residents and abutters. The article was written extremely broadly; it specified neither dollar amounts nor spending limits, and it would have granted the Select Board sweeping authority to “acquire … by eminent domain, permanent and temporary easements, on and off South Main Street” as part of a project to build a shared use path through the neighborhood. It authorized the board to “raise and appropriate, transfer from available funds, and/or borrow a sum of money to fund the foregoing project and any and all costs incidental or related thereto …”

This Town Meeting vote was only the latest chapter in an ongoing saga that has pitted the South Main Street neighborhood against the Williamsburg Mill River Greenway Committee, which plans to replace the neighborhood’s well-used sidewalk with a bike path precariously close to homes along the street. It is worth noting that, while virtually all the residents of South Main strongly oppose the plan, the proponents of the project almost all live elsewhere. Residents have pointed out safety and liability problems with the path crossing blind driveways, and hazards for pedestrians as well. People young and old, and people walking dogs, would have to mix with two-way bike and e-bike traffic on a path which, at 8-feet wide, is 2-feet narrower than the standard 10-foot width for shared use paths. We know that the street is safe for cyclists because we ride it ourselves without concern and we watch dozens of cyclists ride past our homes daily. South Main is an extremely popular bike route that bikes and cars have been sharing for decades without incident. We know what works and what’s going to be problematic for our neighborhood because we live here! We know the sights, sounds, character, rhythms, patterns, pets and people of the place where we live.

We have heard ongoing rhetoric touting “safety” as a key consideration of the Greenway committee’s plan for our street. They seem to think that getting bicycles off the road improves and guarantees safety, but it doesn’t if the off-road path is hazardous to cyclists and pedestrians alike, and the street is actually safe for cycling. With a budget of $2.4 million for 1,600 feet of shared use path, the Greenway plan is a very expensive solution in search of a problem.

The Greenway committee recently decided to relabel their proposed bicycle facility along our street. What had been consistently referred to as a shared use path has suddenly become a “widened sidewalk.” We see this relabeling as little more than a public relations ploy designed to downplay and misrepresent what’s actually in the Greenway plan for South Main: a substandard narrow path, designated for bicycle and e-bike use. If a “widened sidewalk” is truly what’s being sought, then let’s widen the current 4-foot sidewalk to an ADA-compliant 5 feet, which would comfortably accommodate pedestrians, wheelchair users, dog walkers and parents with strollers — and not direct bicycle and e-bike traffic into the midst of those people. Let cyclists continue to enjoy riding on the street, and improve safety for them by lowering the speed limit to 20 mph and enforcing it with speed humps.

A simple exercise: What if this was your neighborhood, the sidewalk was what connected you to your neighbors, and cyclists happily rode by daily along your calm neighborhood street? And what if people from across town decided that safe passage was not enough, they wanted to build a bike path through your neighborhood because there’s one to the south and they’re planning on building one to the north? They dismiss your concerns, ignore regulatory evidence supporting your preferences, and insist that only their design is safe — and when you persist, they accuse you of denying cyclists a means of safely riding through a neighborhood they have imagined more than visited. Welcome to South Main Street in Haydenville.

When we obtained Greenway emails through a public records request, we were horrified at the disdain and disrespect the committee showed toward the neighborhood and members of the Select Board — just one of several concerns we have with the process by which the Greenway plan has been moved forward.

We residents of South Main Street count ourselves fortunate to enjoy the support of many friends and allies from around the town and beyond. But we have been mischaracterized and mislabeled by others as NIMBYs, paranoid and that old chestnut, “afraid of change.” We are none of those things. We are pro-cyclist and pro-pedestrian, and we believe that enjoyable, accessible accommodation for cyclists of all ages and abilities does not have to be achieved at the expense of safety for the people who live here. We’ve been fighting for two years to preserve the character and livability of the place we call home, and we’re not about to stop pushing for safe and appropriate accommodation for cyclists and pedestrians alike on our street.

For more information, please visit our website at southmain01039.com.

Gerry Shattuck lives in Haydenville.