Opinion: Loudon Road redux
Published: 10-03-2024 6:00 AM |
Chuck Annal lives in Concord.
So, we’re going to fight this battle again. It snuck up on us lately, but now comes Tim Robson and Concord Greenspace to declare that Loudon Road is truly the road to hell: too many accidents, too many pedestrians hit by cars, no bicycle lanes, no trees, no walkable space, too much speeding. Back from the dead is the plan first floated in 2014.
Loudon Road would be reduced to two driving lanes, instead of the current four lanes. This idea was resoundingly opposed 10 years ago by residents and businesses both on Loudon Road and on side streets that connect to Loudon Road. The proposal was rejected by the City Council at that time and by most of the people who spoke at that same meeting, including a representative of the businesses on Loudon Road and the city councilor representing the Heights.
What was said then applies today: it is folly to think that traffic on Loudon Road would move smoothly with two lanes, a bicycle lane and a turning lane. Ten years ago it was not unusual for traffic on Loudon Road to be backed up from the light on East Side Drive all the way back to the Windmill Restaurant. It’s still like that today. It doesn’t take much observation to see that traffic in Concord has increased dramatically since 2014, so reducing travel lanes will result in Loudon Road being a giant parking lot.
In time people will simply avoid Loudon Road, thus putting the various businesses there in financial jeopardy and creating heavier traffic in residential neighborhoods. We are once again told that more crashes occur on Loudon Road than on any other road in the city. In 2014, over 7 million cars traveled on Loudon Road, making it the busiest road in Concord and most likely to have accidents. However, a police report, printed by the Monitor at that time, indicated that “the majority of accidents on Loudon Road occur not in the corridor targeted for redesign, but at the I-93/Loudon Road interchange.”
Technically, Loudon Road begins at that interchange and its accident numbers were rolled into accidents in the corridor, creating the impression that Loudon Road is a dangerous place to drive. It would be good to see what current information is available on where Loudon Road accidents occur. Merely stating that 150 accidents occur per year does not identify how many happened from Airport Road out to the now defunct mall, the stretch targeted for redesign.
Attempting to turn Loudon Road into something like Concord’s gentrified downtown is simply an idea whose time, once again, has not come. My hope is that residents of the Heights step forward, as they did ten years ago, and once again voice their opposition and dissatisfaction.
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