Donna Welch-Murphy has lived near the intersection of Mountain Road, Shawmut Street and East Side Drive for only a couple of years.
But as drivers whip past her house on their way through East Concord, she’s witnessed at least three accidents there.
So she is in favor of a long-awaited roundabout at that intersection, near Exit 16 off Interstate 93.
“This is going to make a big, big difference,” Welch-Murphy said. “You’ve got to slow down. It’s going to make people more aware.”
Welch-Murphy was one of at least 50 people at a public meeting Thursday about the roundabout design. Neighbors first vetted the idea in the mid-2000s, but construction was pushed off until this summer. Finally, about $895,000 for the project was included in this year’s capital budget, which was approved last June.
So the roundabout has already been approved, but on Thursday night, City Engineer Ed Roberge fielded questions and reminded neighbors of the pitch nearly eight years ago.
A roundabout, he said, would improve safety in a problem intersection.
“You experience it, and it’s not really a pleasant experience,” Roberge said. “That’s just not really safe today. (The roundabout is) designed to calm traffic, slow people down to a reasonable 12 to 15 miles per hour through the circle. And it’s also looking at a gateway to East Concord village coming off the interstate.”
The Concord Police Department reported at least 12 accidents in that intersection from January 2012 to December 2015 – an average of four accidents each year for the past three years. At Thursay’s meeting, one woman stood up to say she had been rear ended there by a careless driver. She suffered whiplash, and her car was seriously damaged. She supported the roundabout idea as a safer option.
“I was one of your accident statistics,” she told the crowd. “I have thought that what we have now is deadly.”
Roughly a dozen people spoke at the meeting, and most had questions about the design. Some wondered how the East Concord roundabout will compare to others in the city, questioning its size and shape. They worried the design isn’t big enough to handle the volume of cars coming off the highway, or traveling Mountain Road and East Side Drive at the beginning and end of the work day. They asked about cars backing up, as they often do now during rush hour.
In the early to mid-2000s, the city’s first four roundabouts were in the Alice Drive subdivision of Penacook. In 2008, a roundabout was added at the intersection of Liberty, Auburn and Centre streets. Another followed in 2009, at the intersection of North State and Franklin streets. And in 2015, a seventh roundabout was completed where Village and Washington streets intersect in the center of Penacook.
Roberge said this East Concord roundabout will be 120 feet wide, and about 7,000 cars travel through the intersection on peak traffic days. By comparison, about 10,000 cars a day travel through the Centre Street roundabout, which is 100 feet wide.
Dan Hudson, a project manager from CMA Engineers, estimated the queue might be about four cars deep on a busy day. The line would be much longer with a traffic signal, he said.
The city has seen a near-immediate improvement in safety at those roundabouts, Roberge noted. For example, he said, the Centre Street intersection saw an average of five accidents per year before the roundabout. Some included injuries. But with the roundabout, that number has dramatically decreased.
He also assured residents the roundabout will be wide enough for school buses, the city’s largest fire trucks and the tractor trailers that come off the highway or through East Concord. In response to other questions, Roberge promised drivers would still be able to enter the Mobile gas station on the intersection, and he said the city hopes to reduce the sharp slope of Shawmut Street as it descends into the circle.
In a neighborhood that has tried for years to get drivers to slow down, even those who endorsed the roundabout idea were wary it would actually work. When Roberge said new signs will warn speeding drivers of the upcoming roundabout, everyone in the room — including the city engineer — laughed.
“There’s another department in the city that might be involved here to slow those drivers down,” longtime East Concord resident Dean Wilber said.
“Speed, speed, speed,” he added later. “Where’s the police?”
After the meeting, Wilber was still skeptical. He worried in particular about cyclists who zip through the neighborhood. A former driver’s education instructor, he said he often worries about hitting racing bikes on the area’s winding roads.
The sidewalks are purposefully wide through the roundabout to accommodate walkers and cyclists, but he worried people on bikes will compete with car traffic in the roundabout rather than using those paths.
“They assume they have the right of way, and they take it,” Wilber said.
The city is working on a final design, and will soon put the job out to bid. Construction is scheduled for late summer, and traffic will still be able to pass through while the roundabout was being built.
Over and over, Roberge assured the neighbors the end product will be safer and less congested.
“Now, you have a fighting chance,” Roberge said.
(Megan Doyle can be reached at 369-3321, mdoyle@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @megan_e_doyle.)