My thanks to Councilwoman Candace Bouchard for her support of a public meeting of Heights residents with city engineers on the city’s renewed interest in reconfiguring Loudon Road.
I think most of the residents of the Heights are reasonable people with open minds and are willing to listen to new ideas. However, as Bouchard stated, there are a number of questions that still need to be answered.
As a lead up to that meeting, I would ask that the presentation the city proposes include the following:
1) Can someone explain how the reduction of four lanes in the city’s most heavily trafficked corridor to two lanes will ensure a smooth flow of traffic? Please don’t tell us this configuration worked elsewhere. We need to know the logic and details behind something that even the city engineers acknowledge is counter-intuitive.
2) While the issue of safety is one of the driving forces behind the reconfiguration, we need to know how many accidents occurred between Airport Road and the Steeplegate Mall in the last year. How many of those accidents were the result of impaired or distracted drivers or weather conditions and nothing to do with the present configuration? Given the high number of cars using that road, how does the accident rate compare with other heavily trafficked roads in the city? In the same light, someone needs to address the police report cited in the Monitor last year that indicated that most of the accidents on Loudon Road actually happened where Interstate 93 exits on to Loudon Road and not on the corridor from Airport Road to the mall.
3) While the paving project may cost taxpayers $1.5 million (can we please see the bids?), I assume the cost would be bonded over several years and would not cost taxpayers the full amount in the first year. How many years would the project be bonded and what would the additional cost be per tax payer each year over that time? It’s a little misleading to suggest that the full amount would hit taxpayers in one year.
Frankly, telling us that the only way to get Loudon Road paved is to include it in the new configuration plan is disingenuous.
However, if plausible answers to the above questions can be given, I think Heights residents would be much more inclined to support the latest plan.
(Chuck Annal lives in Concord.)