What goes around comes around: While reading Ray Duckler’s article on Sept. 14 about the re-striping of a section of Route 4 in Chichester, it reminded me of the reason why this piece of highway was widened to begin with.

Back in the early 1990s, there were lots of complaints about the difficulties eastbound Route 4 travelers had in climbing Bean Hill (between Bailey Road and King Road) due to slow-moving trucks, and particularly during poor weather driving conditions.

Route 4 at that time had one lane in each direction flanked by 10-feet-wide paved shoulders.

After meetings with local officials and abutters, including old friend Larry Phillips, the state Department of Transportation added a truck-climbing lane up Bean Hill. The pros and cons of such a project were thoroughly debated, including the issue of eastbound left turns being made out of the left lane, with thru vehicles looming in your rearview mirror.

Also of concern was the problem the westbound left-turners would have picking a safe gap to turn across the two uphill lanes, while holding up traffic behind them.

So, the project was built, and over the years traffic increased and additional driveways were built on both sides of the road, which created more opportunities for deadly crashes. That brings us to today and the removal of the truck-climbing lane and the creation of the dual-use center-turning lane.

I drove that section the day after it was completed, and it looked good. It will help prevent many of the types of crashes that made the change necessary. It will, however, increase the opportunity for head-on crashes by competing left-turners or crashes caused by impatient drivers passing illegally.

How long will it be before people complain about the long lines of eastbound traffic or that Bean Hill needs to be salted more often or more heavily?

The Chichester police chief is looking for “more complex changes to be made to the road.” I think he really means an east-west bypass from I-393 in Concord to the Spaulding Turnpike, but that project funding lost out to the completion of parallel route N.H. 101 east-west from Manchester to I-95. Maybe it’s time to bring the old plans out of mothballs.

Northwood fought hard against the bypass back then, fearing that Antique Alley would suffer badly without thru traffic. Maybe they have changed their minds by now.

(Gil Rogers lives in Bow.)