When Hillsboro applauded the opening of the new bypass the town waxed
on about how the traffic jams would disappear and the residents of the
town could get their streets back. The bypass consisting of routes 202
and 9 cost the state and the residents millions of dollars in gas taxes.
After the bypass was opened the businesses in Hillsboro complained of a
huge drop off in traffic because people no longer drove through town so
they lost the spur of the moment traffic flow. The town then complained
loud and long that the signage had to be improved , which I agreed with
because it was confusing. The new bypass created a grade separated
interchange where routes 202 and 9 diverge which smoothed out the
traffic flow and  eliminated the backups originally driving through
Hillsboro created.  Sales of land and houses took off to the  west of
Hillsboro because as I often heard said "With the new bypass we are 20
minutes closer to Concord."

Now the town of Hillsboro is looking at having a super Wal-mart built
which will raise their tax base and provide a shopping opportunity for
local people but there is one big "rub" with the plan. Hillsboro now
says that their roads can't handle all the traffic the new Wal-mart will
generate so they want direct access to route 9 instead of having the
traffic go through the intersection of route 202 and the old route 9 at
the McDonald's. The town also says that they do not need to follow the
rules of  Title 3 Chapter 36 Section 36:57 which says you have to notify
a regional planning commission and also every abutter town of a
development that will have a regional impact. If the town is going to
alter the flow of traffic on route 9 to aid their development then it
does in fact have a regional impact.

The state said they will not put in traffic lights on route 9 and they
in fact want to block any left hand turns from Main Street which was the
old route 9 West onto the current route 9. They also want to put up a
median on route 9  to block west bound traffic from making a left hand
turn onto Main Street to get to the new Wal-mart. One has to remember
that since the town of Dublin and others have blocked any widening of
route 101 then route 9 is now designated as the main east west route for
the western part of the state and the State DOT does not want anything
that will slow down traffic. The town of Hillsboro has said that the
median idea is unacceptable and want a traffic light on route 9 plus
left hand turn lanes. Part of the town's logical backing for this need
is the fact that currently the fire and rescue squad often goes up Main
Street  instead of turning at the McDonald's to get onto route 9 west.
If the town is asserting that the current road design of the grade
separated interchange of route 202 and 9 can't handle all the Walmart
generated traffic why the heck would the fire and rescue squad continue
to drive into all of the newly created traffic when they could use the
existing ramps to bypass the new Walmart.

The town now proposes the folly of putting in a rotary / round about to
allow the traffic to blend. While New Hampshire still appears to think
that a rotary will work most other states that have had them for a long
time are eliminating them because they are usually high up on the list
of  areas with the most frequent accidents. They also only work if you
have a low volume of traffic which route 9 does not have. You also have
to look at 10 to 20 years out because by then there will be a huge
increase in traffic volume. Classic examples of roads with rotaries and
huge traffic backups plus a high accident rate are the Epsom Rotary
where route 28 and 4 / 202 / 9 meet. In the summer 2 mile backups on a
weekend in all directions is not uncommon. Morning backups can easily be
a half a mile in each direction. The rotary at Route 9 and 125 in East
Barrington can be just as bad. Another location that has many backups is
route 28 and 11 in Alton or Route 28 and route 121 next to Lake
Massabesic. Anyone can ask these towns where they have the greatest
number of accidents and they will point out theses locations. In
Massachusetts there was the Rotary at Wellington Circle in Medford ,
Bell Circle in Revere , Route 2 and Alewife parkway in Cambridge , the
junction of  route 4 and route 3  in Tyngsboro and the rotary at the
Sagamore Bridge going to Cape Cod. All of these rotaries have been
eliminated or now turned into traffic light controlled interchanges but
even now they still have some of the highest accident rates in
Massachusetts. The state is planning on spending several million dollars
to eliminate the Sagamore Bridge rotary to eliminate the 5 to 15 mile
backups that routinely occur there.  In other words Rotaries don't work
once your traffic levels go up.

The next item Hillsboro fails to realize that in order for a rotary to
go in to accommodate the junction of Route 9 , West Main Street , Route
31 and Saw Mill road the rotary would have to cover a huge area in order
to comply with the latest federal regulations for "sight distance" ,
expected future traffic volumes and proper merge angles. In order to
build something that large it would involve the taking of all the
current adjoining properties at the junctions of 9 , 31 and Saw Mill and
it could even encroach upon Franklin Pierce Homestead.

The short term response is that Hillsboro has a bad case of  NIMBY "Not
In My Backyard" because they want the tax base and the business but they
don't want the traffic it generates. Failure to plan on the part of the
town should not affect my plans to drive smoothly down route 9.  If  the
building of the Wal-mart store overloads the current road system then
what will happen when the town tries to get more businesses to locate
there?  It appears to be a contradiction when the town complained that
due to the loss of traffic through Hillsboro caused by the opening of
the bypass hurt business the town would now work so hard to "force" all
traffic to avoid their downtown area. I've seen several areas in the
country where a bypass was built around a town and the town then allowed
all the new businesses to be built along the bypass. The end result was
after about 10 years the bypass now had about 15 traffic lights and the
states had to build a new bypass around the old bypass at a cost of
several million dollars.


Don Armstrong cavman@lighthorse-scavenger.org
604th Trans / 52nd CAB, Pleiku, Apr / July 68
D Troop 3/5 Cav, Bearcat /Dong Tam , July 68 May 69
http://www.lighthorse-scavenger.org