BANGOR, Maine — A woman was taken to a local hospital after a Honda Civic she was driving struck a newly constructed traffic island and flipped onto its roof on Main Street on Wednesday morning.
The accident occurred in front of the Main Street Garage shortly before 9 a.m., and the hospitalized woman was not seriously injured, according to Bangor Fire Lt. Bill VanPeursem.
A female passenger in the vehicle and a dog were not injured, VanPeursem said. The names of the women were not immediately available.
VanPeursem said the vehicle was traveling toward Hampden and the new islands in the center of the roadway appear to have been a contributing factor.
“Just pay attention to where you’re going out there driving and stay off your cellphone,” VenPeursem said. The woman was not on her cellphone at the time of the accident, he said.
Van Peursem said it did not appear the driver was attempting to turn across the median into a business. The vehicle wound up on its roof in the westbound lane.
During the past month, construction crews have been installing new median islands down the center of Main Street from the Cross Insurance Center to Cedar Street — a roughly three-quarter-mile stretch. It was one of the last steps in a major Main Street construction season that has featured significant underground infrastructure improvements and a lot of lane closures throughout the spring and summer.
The median work has largely wrapped up for the winter. There are plans to plant shrubs and trees and install streetlights in some of the islands, but the holes created to hold them will remain unfilled until crews can place the greenery in the spring. The car may have flipped after striking one of those holes in the median.
The medians were built for several reasons — most of which have to do with improving safety, said Dana Wardwell, Bangor’s director of public works.
Motorists frequently exceed the 25 mph speed limit on the straight, wide stretch of road, and traffic islands have been proven to slow down traffic. The islands also give pedestrians a place to stop and “take shelter” when crossing, rather than trying to cross five lanes of traffic at once. The area has seen a dramatic increase in pedestrian traffic since the debut of Waterfront Concerts and the Cross Insurance Center.
Funding for the project was approved by The Maine Department of Transportation and included about $960,000 worth of federal and state funds. The city covered the remaining $240,000.
Some residents and businesses expressed concerns leading up to the project that the raised islands would hinder traffic trying to access or leave parking lots and side streets along Main Street. In response, the city made the islands shorter and designed more gaps to allow more turns in more places, but officials said at the time that they were hesitant to request a substantial downsizing of median plans, worrying that it might put project funding at risk.
Wardwell said the city would take steps to better mark the islands until the trees and lights are placed and motorists get used to the new strips. He said he wasn’t sure whether there were traffic cones on the median Monday morning prior to the crash, though there were cones there while first responders were on scene. Wardwell said crews would put down traffic barrels around the strips.
The city also stated that crews will paint fresh lines on Main Street in the near future, which should make it clearer where the medians start. Most of the painted traffic lines on the road were dug up or covered during construction.
Christine Vallance, a witness to Wednesday’s crash, had just dropped her son off at day care on Lincoln Street when the accident happened.
“As I turned the corner coming onto Main Street, I heard a great big smash behind me,” she said. “I looked in my rearview and saw the blue Civic hit the hole in the median and bounce out of it. I’m guessing she tried to overcorrect and get back into the road.”
Vallance said that the driver was wearing her seat belt, which likely prevented more serious injuries.
“There were a bunch of [responders] here who acted very, very quickly,” she said.