Residents concerned about pedestrian safety around Merrimack Valley High School will have a chance to voice their concerns at a public meeting Thursday.
The Penacook Village Association, the city of Concord and the Merrimack Valley School District are hosting a neighborhood forum at the school at 6 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 29.
They’ll be discussing what city engineer David Cedarholm says is a perception of increased speeding on Community Drive and High Street and how it could impact the Merrimack Valley School Board’s proposed Safe Routes to School plan.
Cedarholm said reports of speed incidents have increased since the streets were paved within the last two years. Both streets have 25 mph speed limits.
Kathy Bush, a board member of the PVA, said the issue is particularly concerning because the school district is a designated Safe Routes to School community. The national program encourages increased physical activity from students by promoting safe, alternative methods of transport to school, such as biking and walking.
That distinction allowed the district to secure a grant for several improvements, including a culvert on the Boscawen Elementary School safe school route and some of the traffic infrastructure around Merrimack Valley Middle School.
And while those improvements did increase walking safety, it wasn’t as much as the district’s Safe Routes committee wanted, Bush said, who used to serve on the committee. And the new paving has encouraged drivers – “youthful drivers,” Bush says – to speed along the Community Drive and High Street straightaways.
The district used to employ crossing guards and enthusiastic parents used to volunteer to lead “walking school buses,” or packs of children headed to school in the morning, Bush said.
But those measures have gone away, and Bush said she hopes to raise interest at the meeting in bringing back volunteer efforts.