One group with concerns about the preferred alternative for the I-93 expansion are businesses in and near Fort Eddy Plaza in Concord.
They are worried because the proposal would remove a small ramp at Exit 14 that lets cars go directly onto I-93 North from the plaza’s Loudon Road exit.
If the renovations go as proposed, getting onto the highway northbound from the shopping center would require one of two circuitous alternatives, including heading out Fort Eddy Road onto I-393 and looping back toward downtown.
“That means more traffic along Fort Eddy Road seeking access to I-93, which shifts traffic from state infrastructure to infrastructure that the city has to pay for,” said Laura Hartz, an attorney representing the plaza and businesses on Fort Eddy Road. “They would have to deal with the consequence of frustrated customers – maybe that means that people don’t go to the Shaws or Staples … because they don’t want to deal with the access.”
The group has asked the special committee overseeing the plans to reject the proposal and have the Department of Transportation “present a more reasonable proposal that would better protect these established businesses and their clientele.”
At a Tuesday hearing on the project, Gene McCarthy of McFarland-Johnson, the engineering firm overseeing the project, said that keeping the ramp would cost a lot of expensive problems.
The complication is that widening I-93 from four lanes to six lanes plus auxiliary lanes is difficult in the area near the plaza where the highway is squeezed between the Merrimack River to the east and railroad tracks, a utility substation, Stickney Avenue and several buildings to the west.
Keeping the northbound ramp from Fort Eddy Plaza, he said, would force the highway widening to shift so far west that it would require moving a number of these facilities, at huge expense and difficulty.
A special committee is expected to decide next spring on whether to accept DOT’s plan for the entire road widening, which stretches from the I-89 intersection in Bow through Exit 15 in Concord. If that happens, final engineering and design could start, with construction beginning by 2023.
