LEWISTON — A new traffic light on Plourde Parkway and dedicated lanes for traffic entering Lisbon Street should make that area safer, according to state highway engineers.

Engineers from the Maine Department of Transportation on Tuesday presented their plans to city councilors to reduce traffic accidents along the stretch of Lisbon Street where it meets Plourde Parkway

Project Manager Paul MacDonald said he’d worked with council representatives, city staff and state legislators to come up with plan suited to the city.

“There have been numerous meetings on this project, with the city and the state legislators and everybody,” MacDonald said.

Councilor Mark Cayer said his only concern was that the changes did not do enough to help westbound cars coming off southbound Plourde Parkway headed for downtown Lewiston. Those drivers would still have to look sharply over their left shoulders to see oncoming Lisbon Street traffic.

“It”s problematic for any driver, and it’s too bad,” Cayer said. “I think we’re going to be stuck with that problem forever. But I do agree you guys did come to the table and work with us.”

MacDonald said the state could work to make that interchange less of a merge and more of a right-hand turn. He said, however, that westbound drivers would have a dedicated lane of their own, for a while.

“Once you pull down, I don’t want to say you don’t have to look, but you will have your own dedicated lane,” he said. “We can look to make it more of a T-intersection, but you won’t be competing as much with oncoming traffic.”

The plans could be put into work in 2015, MacDonald said.

State engineers first outlined three alternative changes to the Lisbon Street-Plourde Parkway corridor designed to make it safer and smoother in October.

State officials counted 18 accidents per year along that corridor at three locations — the two ramps connecting eastbound Lisbon Street to Plourde Parkway and at the looping ramp connecting Plourde with westbound Lisbon Street.

MacDonald said the plans call for three main changes. First, Plourde-to-Lisbon Street traffic would be controlled by a traffic signal. Second, the long, looping ramp connecting northbound Plourde with westbound Lisbon would be made smaller, forcing cars to slow down. They’d enter their own dedicated lane, as well.

Finally, westbound Lisbon Street traffic would be reduced to one lane at Pleasant Street.

“We’ll reconfigure the light at Westminster and at Pleasant Street,” MacDonald said. “We think this design takes care of all three of those crash locations, and we’re going to take care of pedestrians with sidewalks between the two ramps with crosswalks between each of them. So I believe we pretty much have covered everything we can out there.”

The work would be funded entirely by the state.

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