Erin Waters grew up walking in Concord’s south end to get to Rundlett Middle School, and recalls sqeezing past the parked cars when traversing the narrow Cypress and Noyes streets.
She now lives on Harvard Street, which intersects Noyes Street. She appreciates the charming neighborhood and its proximity to the school. But Waters and several other neighbors feel the safety and character of the area could be threatened by a proposal to divert buses past their houses for student pick-up and drop-off when the new middle school opens.
Dozens of residents voiced their concerns to the Transportation Policy Advisory Committee on Thursday to urge the city of Concord to step in.
“I want you all to know that this is a place that people love and people care about, and we’re here because it’s a neighborhood like you would come out for your own,” Waters said at the meeting.
The committee unanimously approved a recommendation for the City Council to engage with the school board on exploring alternative bus route configurations that do not include Cypress and Noyes streets.
John Weaver, an attorney with McLane Middleton Law Firm retained by the group of residents, said the outcome was “the best that we could have hoped for.”
“I know that the school board, city council are pretty far along this particular path, and I know that there’s a certain amount of resistance to change at this point, but I think that a number of members of the committee, as we went along, really came around to the fact that having busses in that neighborhood, based on all the data and patterns that we see nationally, making an accident inevitable,” he said in an interview.
Currently, cars and buses travel through a one-way road off South Street that converges into two flows that meet again before joining Conant Drive. The move to propose a different traffic plan comes from the wish to separate the buses from parent drop-off and pick-up.
The proposed traffic plan, presented at an April 9 school board meeting by engineering firm GPI, suggested reconstructing the current roadway solely for parent travel with parking spaces for staff. Buses will enter Noyes Street into a newly constructed loop north of Rundlett before exiting through Cypress and Noyes streets onto South Street.
Since the idea was floated to residents at the start of the year, opposition started to grow. Many have stated it will endanger the lives of pedestrians and children walking to school as well as disturb the character of the neighborhood.
“It’s 19 buses in and out, twice a day,” said Don Brueggemann, who lives on Noyes Street. “A bus would go by my house almost 80 times a day with the new proposed traffic plan, which seems like a lot for a little side street.”
Brueggemann said a group of residents has engaged the school board several times without relief.
“There’s never an opportunity to do some exchange, which is really what we were looking for — to sit down and really try to flesh out some of the alternatives and have them kind of see what we’re seeing as far as safety and livability issues within the neighborhood being compromised,” he said.
The group sought out an attorney to make the case for the city to step in. In a July 20 letter to the Transportation Policy Advisory Committee, Weaver stated the city had jurisdiction and responsibility over Cypress and Noyes streets and the city council should advise the school board to review alternative plans.
The committee in an April 23 meeting, voted unanimously to recommend city council to look into building a sidewalk connection on Cypress and Noyes, which have none.
“I don’t think students are going to walk down South Street and take the nice widened path. They’re going to take the shortcut,” Nicole Fox, an at-large representative on the committee, said during Thursday’s meeting. “Whether it’s the school district or the city council, that is a decision that is outside of our hands, but I think someone needs to build that sidewalk.”
Both recommendations will likely appear in the city council’s Sept. 14 meeting, said Councilor Brent Todd.
Many residents on Cypress and Noyes streets voted in favor of rebuilding Rundlett at its current site, a languishing debate last year that concerned the project’s $155 million price tag and its effect on the tax rate. When asked whether he would change his vote to keep the school if he knew about the traffic plan, Cypress Street resident Jim McConaha said he would not.
“That would have given us an opportunity at a very early stage to get the traffic plan changed,” he said.
