Welcome back to the City of Somerville's construction newsletter!

As the sun sets over our new dedicated bus lane on East Broadway, we look back on another month of construction and ahead to a freshly paved Pearl St., water main upgrades, and rehabilitated sewers.

What We're Sharing This Month: 

• Final Paving on Pearl Street
• Water Main Upgrades on Central Broadway
• New Traffic Pattern at Alewife Brook Pkwy, and Powder House Blvd.
• Spring Hill Sewer Separation Update
• Tufts Street Reconstruction (Take the Survey)
• Subterranean Somerville: Sewer TV

After a successful spring and summer of construction, crews are preparing for final paving on Pearl Street.

This week, crews will begin milling (removing the top few layers of asphalt) along Pearl St. between McGrath Hwy. and Mount Vernon St. as well as within nearby intersections. Final paving will follow, currently on track for mid-August.

In addition to enhancing road and sidewalk quality, this project includes the installation of traffic-calming features throughout the neighborhood to improve safety for all users–including students and families traveling to the East Somerville Community School, the Capuano Early Childhood Center, and the Edgerly Education Center. 

Get updates on the milling/paving process and view the final designs at the project website below. 

City contractors have started work on water main improvements along Broadway between Temple St. and Boston Ave. 

Water mains in this area can date back as far as the late 19th/early 20th century. Old pipes suffer from tuberculation, a form of corrosion, which reduces the amount of water that the pipe can supply.

During this project, water mains in the neighborhood will be upgraded through a combination of replacement and rehabilitation processes (such as cured-in-place pipe lining). Some water services (lines connecting individual properties to the water main) will also be replaced through this project. 

Work beginning this summer will continue through the fall and into next year. Estimated final project completion is December 2024. Find periodic updates on this work at our project website below.

The City’s redesign of the intersection of Powder House Blvd. and Alewife Brook Pkwy reached a major milestone last week with the installation of a new traffic pattern–transforming the existing traffic circle to create a T-shaped intersection.

Stop signs have been installed in all three directions, awaiting the installation and electrification of traffic signal equipment.

This new traffic pattern will also create a new residential shared street between 269 and 294 Alewife Brook Pkwy. A shared street is a low-volume residential street that prioritizes people walking, rolling, and biking. 

In the coming weeks, crews will install curbing along Powder House Blvd from North Street to Alewife Brook Pkwy in advance of the construction of new sidewalks and protected bike lanes.

Work on Spring Hill continues as City contractors work on both underground utility improvements and streetscape reconstruction throughout the neighborhood.

Ongoing Underground Utility Improvements 

• School St. (Summer St. to Highland Ave.) - new water, sewer, and drainage utility installations underway. 
• School St. remains closed (open to resident traffic) during work hours (weekdays, approximately 7 a.m. - 5 p.m.)
• Highland Ave. (School St. to Walnut St.) - new water, sewer, and drainage utility installations underway. 
• Highland Ave. eastbound traffic detour will continue to be in place over the coming weeks. 
• Westwood Rd. (Central St. to Benton St.) - water main bypass installation starting week of 7/31, utilities improvements to follow.

Ongoing Streetscape Improvement work

• Summer St. (School St. to Central St.) - crews excavating sidewalks, installation of new sidewalks and westbound separated cycle track to follow. 
• Oxford St. - sidewalk restoration underway.

For a comprehensive view of infrastructure improvements throughout the Spring Hill neighborhood, visit our project website.

Please take the Tufts Street Transportation Safety Concerns and Needs Survey to share your feedback and ideas. The deadline for survey responses is August 14. The survey is available in Spanish, Nepali, Haitian Creole, Portuguese, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified Chinese. 

First, City contractors clean and clear debris from pipes. Cleaning restores full capacity flow within the pipe and allows for a better view of the interior. An above-ground operator will then drive a wheel-mounted camera through the pipe to collect high-resolution video from inside the pipe.

Wheel-mounted camera entering sewer

Once the video has been processed, City engineering staff and contractors review to identify any deficiencies in the pipe. During this review, City staff are looking for evidence of defects that challenge a pipe’s structural integrity, such as large cracks, collapsing walls, missing bricks, etc.

Image of structural issue identified by CCTV inspection

Occasionally, we will find issues that must be fixed immediately (such as collapses) through emergency work. Less severe issues are added to annual sewer rehabilitation projects. 

Between 2020 and 2022, the City inspected approximately 350,000 linear feet of sanitary sewer. Work for 2023 is currently underway in West Somerville.

There is a lot of work being done in Somerville as we look to modernize and improve our city’s infrastructure, and we can’t cover it all in one email.

Stay up-to-date with what’s going on in your neighborhood and around the city via the following channels: 

• Sign up for City Alerts - Receive important notifications about work in your area.

• Follow us on Twitter - Tweets about curb-cuts, culverts, and more.

• Visit our new construction page - A comprehensive look at work across the city.

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