In NH’s 4th Largest Community?

How Do NH DOT Exit 4A Design Changes

• Reduce Congestion
• Increase Safety
• Improve Economic Vitality

Exit 4A in Derry, NH (background)

• An exit off of Interstate 93 between exit 4 in Derry, NH and exit 5 in Londonderry, NH
• The exit was first proposed in the 1980s
• Project efforts have been paused and restarted a number of times
• Most recently, efforts were halted because of budget overruns
• After the pause, NH was slated to receive the following federal funding
• $118,042,741 from the National Highway Performance Program
• $12,159,919 from the Highway Safety Improvement Program
• $11,276,320 from the Congestion Mitigation & Air Quality Program

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Exit 4A in Derry, NH (background)

• As part of the exit project the New Hampshire Department of Transportation (NH DOT) proposed a pedestrian tunnel underpass to accommodate pedestrian and bike traffic anticipated to be in the thousands per day
• the underpass tunnel was detailed to bidders
• a detailed bid came in at approximately $1,000,000
• After restarting the project in October of 2021, NH DOT abandoned the tunnel, seemingly to save money, in favor of an Alternative Design
• The Alternative Design has no publicly available costs associated with it, so what money it could save is unclear
• The Alternative Design presents a number of safety and congestion issues

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NH DOT Exit 4A project description

A component of the design (until recently)

A pedestrian tunnel under the proposed six lane Interstate Highway exit

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For

reference,

current

Kelsen

Brewing

location

Derry, NH

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Traffic off of Interstate 93

TUNNEL

In the NH DOT’s own proposal

A closer look

As of October 13, 2021

The NH DOT site replaced the entire mitigation section, which had been posted to the public for some time, with this:

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• “...no mitigation measures have been proposed.” But they have and are a matter of record, presumably, written by their own staff into their proposal as previous slides of the NH DOT’s own site show
• Section 4(f) Evaluation appears to be missing from the website

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Well beyond preserving the rail corridor

this tunnel would accomplish several things

• It would entirely separate pedestrians, bikers, wheelchair users, skaters, baby carriages , etc., from traffic
• It would not require acquisition of any houses, there are none there
• It would create direct route under the intersection parallel to a former railway and would not require any turns or switchbacks
• It would require no traffic lights
• It is not mapped as a FEMA floodplain

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How many users currently travel the rail trails in Derry and the surrounding area?

• Derry Rail Trail, Thursday, June 25th – Wednesday, July 22nd, 2020, total traffic for the period analyzed: 15,776 (approx 3,941 per week)
• Londonderry Rail Trail, Friday, October 2nd – Wednesday, October 14th, 2020, total traffic for the period analyzed: 7,719 (approx 4,158 per week)
• Windham Rail Trail, Saturday, May 2nd – Monday, June 1st, 2020, total traffic for the period analyzed: 31,454 (approx 7,105 per week)

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Source: Southern New Hampshire Planning Commission website

How many people will use the rail trails in Derry and the surrounding area when trails link?

• Currently Windham, Salem, and Derry do not link north with Londonderry and Manchester, NH--once this happens, usage is expected to skyrocket as the Granite State Rail Trail approaches its goal to provide a 120-mile transportation corridor to recreate and commute over from Salem to Lebanon, NH
• Dave Topham of the NH Rail Trails Coalition quoted a NH DOT study that predicted this section of the trail could see 2,500-7,000 users per day once it is linked up
• Usage has been going up along all trails in the area since their inception and this shows no sign of abating--people of all ages and mobility modes highly value their rail trails and frequent them

Recently, the NH DOT endorsed an alternative to the tunnel (blue)

Details of The Alternative Design NH DOT endorses

• The Alternative Design would leave the trail, parallel the busy route 93 off-ramp, cross over driveways, turn at a 90-degree angle and go down a street
• It would switchback at 180-degree angle, go up the same path it just went down, drop under a bridge to join a brook in a FEMA flood zone and exit the brook up an incline
• It would meander through an area currently occupied by several businesses and rejoin the trail

Issues with The Alternative Design

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• Cyclists coasting down 5% grades to hit 90-degree turns may crash*
• The 180-degree switchback also poses a challenge for cyclists*
• Others (maybe in wheelchairs, walking, on skateboards, and bikes) trying to go up the grades on a 10-foot wide trail could result in accidents*
• People pushing baby carriages (often running) will be challenged by the grading

*Per Dave Topham of the NH Rail Trails Coalition

Issues with The Alternative Design

It also reroutes the trail and users off a former railbed not prone to flooding directly into a FEMA flood zone

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FEMA AE Flood Zone

Source of above map, FEMA website

Tunnel

Issues with The Alternative Design

The area floods: flood zone damage is listed as “severe” to streets and adjacent structures in the area in a 2015 hazard plan by the Town of Derry--The Alternative is below street level, which holds the potential to flood even more

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For those who can’t use The Alternative

If The Alternative is flooded out or can’t be used by some people, NH DOT is proposing a signalized crosswalk crossing multiple lanes of traffic on a major highway off-ramp

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Issues with the traffic light add-on option

• Safety:
• If even a small percentage of the thousands per day during peak usage opt to use traffic lights, they will be crossing MULTIPLE lanes of traffic at an off-ramp of the state’s busiest highway
• This design would herd thousands of cars and people into the same exact space, a multi-lane intersection that doesn’t currently exist, in the hopes that all can navigate that crossing safely
• Congestion:
• Traffic will come to complete standstill within a few thousand feet of one of the busiest portions of Interstate 93
• If lights are pedestrian operated, traffic can be stopped over and over again as trail usage increases

Issues with the traffic light add-on option

• Economic Development:
• Businesses located along the trail corridor have indicated rail trails have been an economic plus for Derry, Windham, and Salem (Tuscan Village built a portion of it)--why place obstacles in the way of this development?
• People may not go north or come south through Derry if they have to navigate several lanes of traffic or a flood area, which would hamper the benefits of a transportation corridor in progress from Salem to Lebanon, NH

Issues with the traffic light add-on option

• Economic Development:

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Bikes line up at The Grind, a business along the rail trail, during the pandemic

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Zoom-in of wording on sign at Tuscan Village in Salem, NH sponsored by 1.59 billion dollar company LL Bean, promoting the bike-ped corridor from Salem to “downtown Derry”--why put a red light to this?

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How Do NH DOT Exit 4A design changes reduce congestion, increase safety, and improve economic vitality?

Answer: given the factual information presented, it’s extremely difficult to see how

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Also, in NH DOT’s own public survey for its Ten Year Plan (2022-2032), three out of four of the top policies were: #1 expand travel options, #2 improve safety, and #4 reduce congestion

By contrast, the tunnel does all of these things

• Safety: it keeps thousands of pedestrians, bikers, skaters, wheelchair users, and more, entirely out of a multi-lane intersection
• Congestion: it lets traffic flow freely by not feeding people directly into an interstate off-ramp and supports local off-street work commutes by bike
• Economic Vitality: it allows thousands people per day who eat, drink, and shop, to easily commute and recreate as part of a 120-mile transportation corridor--the current trail attracts people from over the Massachusetts border, along with their spending, why not grow this and local spending by supporting a safe economic path to Manchester and beyond?
• It also meets NH DOT’s own public survey policy approaches for 2022-2032 of expanding travel options, improving safety, and reducing congestion

Further Questions and How You Can Make a Difference

• Questions:
• Why has NH DOT seemingly not lived up to its own claims of safety, eliminating congestion, and increasing economic vitality with its design changes?
• Why has NH DOT not supplied costs to The Alternative Design before advancing it--doesn’t NH state government pride itself on being transparent?
• Why has NH DOT not held any public meeting to explain its Alternative Design in detail with costs and comparisons to the tunnel plan (which has detailed costs)?
• Why did NH DOT and the Executive Council show the tunnel as part of the Ten Year Plan at the many public 2019 Governor's Advisory Commission on Intermodal Transportation hearings then drop the tunnel in 2020 without public discussion?

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Further Questions and How You Can Make a Difference

• What can you do?:
• You can contact your state reps--your voice matters! (hurry, time is short, if you value your trail, please write or call your reps today) to request that these issues be addressed in any new design BEFORE construction starts---to see who your state reps are and how to contact them click http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/senate/members/wml.aspx
• If you know others who also think safe alternative travel and recreation options are important to the people of Southern New Hampshire, please feel free to cut and paste the following link to this slideshow and send it to them tinyurl.com/yu93ddsr

Contact info:

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Questions or feedback? Contact:

derryrailtrail@comcast.net

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This presentation was compiled and created from publicly available information by Cathy McDonald. Cathy is a volunteer and webmaster for the Derry Rail Trail and a big fan of Southern NH rail trails.

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01-13-2022