ATHOL – Town Manager Shaun Suhoski told Tuesday’s meeting of the Finance and Warrant Advisory Committee that Athol has been notified that the state intends to resurface Main Street [Route 2A] from the South Main Street Bridge to Athol High School.

He said the town has been pushing to have the work done for several years, and the project will commence in early 2026.

“We’ve been advocating with MassDOT [Department of Transportation] for three, going on four years with regard to the state’s numbered routes program,” Public Works Director Dick Kilhart told the Athol Daily News Wednesday.

State Transportation Secretary/CEO Monica Tibbits-Nutt announced last month that the Municipal Pavement Program will spend $50 million in 45 communities across the Commonwealth over the next two years.

The program was initiated in 2021 and since that time, Kilhart and other town officials have asked the state to include Main Street on its list of projects.

“If you walk across the street from Town Hall, some of the rutting on Main Street is, in some instances, six or seven inches deep,” Kilhart said. “And the integrity of that pavement is in very poor shape.”

Kilhart said the “rideability” from the South Main Street Bridge to an area between the high school and the State Police barracks – the stretch of Route 2A overseen by the town – is problematic.

“Even on the DOT mapping it’s listed as fair to poor,” he said.

“So, we’ve been advocating on Athol’s behalf,” he continued. “We spoke with any MassDOT official, anyone from inspectors we have dealt with to the local Chapter 90 folks out of the Northampton office, the DOT director out there – Patty Leavenworth – other people in the DOT office. This was something we spoke with our state legislators about going back to Anne Gobi and asked, ‘How do we get a piece of that pie?’”

Other projects completed under the Municipal Pavement Program include a section of Route 78 in Warwick, Route 78 in Orange to the Warwick town line, and Route 32 from Tully Dam to Richmond, New Hampshire; the last of which covered 11 miles of roadway. Work has also been done in Petersham and Barre.

Kilhart said DOT officials will at some point visit Athol.

“They’ll come out and meet with the DPW,” he said. “They’ll meet with us on-site. We’ll walk that piece of Main Street and discuss what we believe the issues to be.”

The DPW director pointed to several areas where “washboarding” is a problem, including Main Street’s intersections with Pleasant, Crescent and Exchange streets, where ripples appear in the roadway, which Kilhart said was caused by a combination of truck traffic and failed pavement.

In addition to resurfacing, the location of parking spaces will be changed to improve line of sight at intersections.

“We also hope to add some of the rectangular rapid-flash beacons at multiple crosswalks along Main Street,” Kilhart said. “We’ve added a few ourselves over the course of time, but we hope to add those to improve pedestrian safety.”

Sidewalks are not included in the project, although repairs could be made in some isolated spots, according to Kilhart.

“This is primarily a pavement improvement project,” Kilhard explained. “The piece from the (South Street) bridge to Crescent Street, that’s a reconstruction. That’s more than just milling and adding an inch or two of pavement; that’s a full-depth reconstruction. They’re going to dig down and find out why the rutting happened.”

The Main Street Bridge that spans the CSX/PanAm Railroad tracks just west of Riverbend Street will not be included, said Kilhart, “because the railroad bridge is scheduled to be replaced in 2027, I believe, through a DOT-funded obligation.”

Kilhart noted that the Main Street work will take place during what will be the second construction season of the Five Points reconstruction, but believes traffic disruption will be held to a minimum.

Communication between Athol’s DPW and the MassDOT project staff are ongoing, he said, and while the cost of the project hasn’t yet been finalized, the work will not burden the taxpayers.

Greg Vine can be reached at gvineadn@gmail.com.