Plans to make winding Route 9 between Lisbon and Sabattus safer could be ready for the public by late fall.

State Route 9 – Ridge Road in Lisbon and Middle Road in Sabattus – will be the focus of a two-year rebuilding project beginning in the fall of 2006, according project manager Heath Cowan. Cowan met with Sabattus and Lisbon residents Monday to discuss the project and get their suggestions.

“They’re the ones that drive it every day, and we just wanted to get their ideas about what needed to be fixed,” Cowan said. “We’re looking for all the problems – any drainage problems they might know of, where the bad spots are. That kind of thing.”

Cowen said engineers are starting work designing the new road, based on those suggestions.

Preliminary plans call for making the road a consistent 34-feet wide, including the paved shoulders. The paved road currently varies from to 20 to 26 feet wide, with gravel shoulders.

“We’re not necessarily widening the road, if you consider the shoulders part of the road,” he said. “The idea is to make it safer for pedestrians and bicycles and for cars as well.”

The state also hopes to level the road in spots, “shaving off some of the hills and filling in some of the gullies,” Cowen said.

“It won’t be level, but it will be less rolling than it is today,” he said. “The roadway needs to be updated. It’s heavily used now, and we expect use to increase with the new interchange. But regardless of the interchange, we need to do some reconstruction on it. It’s been on our to-do list for a while.”

Sabattus Selectman William Luce said the road is due for some attention.

“It’s a dangerous road, and with the turnpike coming in it’s going to get more dangerous,” Luce said. “It never has been rebuilt – it’s just had a skinny little bit of tar on it every once in a while. The road’s not built to handle the kind of use it gets.”

The Department of Transportation has $1.4 million set aside for preliminary engineering and another $3.3 million for construction of the Middle Road portion of Route 9, from the Maine Turnpike south to Webster Corner Road. Work on that portion could begin in the spring of 2006, Cowen said.

The Lisbon portion, Ridge Road from Webster Corner Road south of Route 196 could come a year later. No money has been budgeted for that project, he said.

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