As another state highway employee in the 1970s who didn’t stay as long or rise as high as Gil Rogers, I was surprised that his column (Monitor Opinion, March ) didn’t mention that the present location of Interstate 93 near downtown Concord was once viewed as possibly temporary.
I once saw conceptual plans of moving the now-cluttered I-89/93 interchange to the other side of the Merrimack River and continuing I-93 up that side of the river past downtown. Whether the present I-93 location would have been removed or remained as a two-lane feeder I couldn’t say, but it shows that the highway department knew then that the present I-93 location was not optimal and was thinking big about alternatives.
A couple decades ago the state Highway Department was reinvented as the kinder, gentler Department of Transportation, which would give more consideration to environmental and cultural concerns. Unfortunately this attitude has been ignored in widening I-93 and not just in Concord – look at the once-bucolic Exit 3 area that now looks like the victim of carpet bombing.
In Concord, they have brought back the double roundabout at Exit 12 that the city council rejected a few years ago and they refuse to consider even minor accessibility improvements, such as an underpass at the north end of Teardrop Park and restoring the pedestrian crossing at Exit 15.
Concord presently has senior leadership in both houses of the Legislature; they need to tell DOT that it’s time to put a new team in charge of this project.
ROY SCHWEIKER
Concord