As 80,000 vehicles move through Concord on Interstate 93 daily – and more on busy holiday weekends – City Councilors heard modified plans this week to expand and widen a large portion of the highway.
“This is not just an issue for people driving through Concord,” said Jason Ayotte, a project manager with the state Department of Transportation. “This is a very unique, dynamic site for a project with many highways converging along this corridor and this will be tremendous to the City of Concord and the town of Bow.”
Ayotte and Gene McCarthy, a project engineer with the design firm McFarland Johnson, spent hours discussing the proposal with the city’s Public Transportation Subcommittee through a series of public and private meetings over the last several months in an attempt to submit a proposal that met the approval of the City Council.
No vote was taken Tuesday night and councilors and project managers plan to reconvene at the City Council meeting in November to further discuss the project and hear public comments.
The goal of the expansion is to widen areas where traffic is often congested, make the highway more accessible to travelers and residents, connect portions of the roadway to the Merrimack River Greenway Trail and improve safety by updating bridge structures, and simplifying interchanges, Ayotte said.
On average, about 80,000 vehicles travel daily between Exits 12 and 15 – a three-mile stretch – whether commuting, passing through or using the highway to cut across the river to the other side of the city, Ayotte explained. Around 30,000 of those vehicles exit the highway in Concord.
When the project was first proposed in 2018, the estimated cost was $268 million. Since then, the price tag has increased to $283 million, which will come from state and federal highway funding, not city tax dollars. The widening will add an additional 23 acres of pavement to the interstate in the city, increasing the total from 113 to 136.
The project aims to add one travel lane in each direction. Between each interchange, planners proposed adding auxiliary lanes to improve safety and reduce unnecessary merging.
Beginning with the Exit 12 area, McCarthy explained that the biggest issue is the deceleration of traffic at the exit ramps, which causes a queue of cars for miles near the interchange.
In an attempt to reduce traffic, the project proposes removing two of the four interchanges at the exit and constructing hybrid roundabouts at each intersection terminal.
This proposal was deemed acceptable by the transportation subcommittee last month with the recommendation that pedestrians and bikers can safely access and navigate the roundabouts, according to the report submitted to City Council.
When looking at the Exit 13 interchange, McCarthy explained that the corridor was built to accommodate future widening and the roadway will not have to be reconstructed like many of the other sections.
Instead, the highway will be widened to the median and the northbound exit ramp will be widened for drivers to safely make a right-hand turn.
The transportation committee asked planners to consider sidewalks on Manchester Street to Terrill Park and the trail system on the other side of the river.
“This could be accomplished by the addition of bicycle curb ramps and 10-foot-wide multi-use pathways extending from the existing paths beneath the Manchester Street bridge to the intersection with the Old Turnpike Road,” the transportation subcommittee report said.
Exit 14 was described as a simple configuration that would continue over Loudon Road and would leave the road at its existing elevation. However, the northbound exit ramp would be removed from Loudon Road to minimize the volume of traffic on the ramp.
“We are proposing the partial return of that northbound ramp but we want to relocate the existing ramp to give the city the opportunity to expand Storrs Street and extend the Merrimack River Greenway Trail,” McCarthy said.
The ramp would only be accessible to people heading west on Loudon Road who can make a right turn to head north on I-93, McCarthy said.
Though transportation subcommittee members did not reach a consensus on the ramp configuration, some members had concerns that only allowing access from the west would increase traffic on North Main Street, according to the report.
The Loudon Road bridge would be expanded to accommodate for the reroute of the Merrimack River Greenway Trail, a suggestion made by the transportation subcommittee and adopted by project managers.
In the report, subcommittee members also suggested adding a shared-use path on the north side and a 6-foot wide sidewalk on the south side.
“This bridge is a gateway connecting the Heights to Downtown and should be appropriately designed,” the report read.
Additionally, the railroad track would be reconfigured and realigned as far from Storrs Street as possible to enable the city’s plans to expand the roadway, McCarthy said.
At Exit 15, two of the loop ramps would be eliminated and replaced with directional ramps to eliminate weaving between the I-93 and 393 connections.
“It would stay within the footprint of the existing interchange and we’d have to add two bridges but it accomplishes a great deal of safety,” McCarthy said.
When it came to widening the interstate as a whole, the transportation subcommittee did not come to a conclusion.
While no public comment was taken Tuesday, Ward 5 Councilor Stacey Brown, who is a member of the transportation subcommittee, said councilors were not provided with all community feedback.
“The majority were against this widening and overall,” she said. “The community rejects the widening of the interstate.”
According to emails and letters submitted to the transportation subcommittee, multiple residents expressed concerns about the environmental impact of the expansion and tree removal, the necessity of a project of this magnitude and the further division of the city that the widening would cause.
“I do not see any benefit to widening the highway through Concord,” Tom Daigle wrote to the transportation subcommittee. “It will result in faster speeds during non-peak travel times and increase noise pollution at all times. Concord is a small town that would be increasingly divided and diluted with a wider highway.”
“The I-93 Bow/Concord project makes no mention of the increased emissions caused by inducing traffic,” Ian McGregor wrote. “This project fails to grasp the importance of planning for a resilient, multi-model transportation network of the future.”
Their concerns were echoed through the submission of more than 80 public comments to the transportation committee.
Councilors echoed their concerns.
“I am worried about the further divide that this pavement will create,” Ward 3 Councilor Jennifer Kretovic said. “Councilor Brown is talking about the number of people that came and spoke at TPAC and one of the resounding messages is that we think Concord is worth getting off the highway and we talked about what that view would look like.”
One proposed alternative included a park over the highway, which many residents were in favor of and project managers agreed could be done alongside the widening.
City Manager Thomas Aspell questioned McCarthy and Ayotte on the impact the expansion might have on smaller back roads that many utilize when the traffic on the highway is heavy.
“My concern is the traffic will keep growing over time and those vehicles will be pushed off onto secondary road systems, which will impact the quality of life for anyone that lives on or uses those streets,” Aspell said. “93’s problem will become all of those roads problems and all of those residents’ problems. Is there a way to tell me what this would mean for all of our side streets?”
McCarthy said he believed the expansion of the highway should eliminate the need for vehicles to divert to smaller side streets.
However, Aspell and many councilors wanted to see the traffic data and how the expansion could impact local streets ahead of the November meeting.
Editor’s note: This article has been corrected to remove an error that the construction would shut down Loudon Road for three years. This information was incorrect in an article on A1 of Wednesday’s Monitor.