Elm Square Safety Improvements
Anyone with suggestions, comments, questions, stories of "near misses", or other concerns is strongly urged to email elmsquaresafety@andoverma.us
and consider CCing walkbikeandover@gmail.com so we can follow up if needed.
Note: all design alternatives can be viewed in the presentation materials posted on the town's project website.
Walk Bike Andover
www.walkbikeandover.org
walkbikeandover@gmail.com
October 30th, 2024
On October 9th at a public feedback meeting, the Town of Andover and their traffic consultant, TEC, released several design alternatives for a potential full reconstruction project of the Elm Square intersection, with the express goal to improve pedestrian and bicyclist safety.
Walk Bike Andover supports the proposed design alternative D1, which fully removes the existing slip right turn lanes in order to better protect people on foot from turning vehicles, significantly improves sight lines at High St. for both drivers and people on foot, and implements traffic calming by shortening turning radii and returning substantial excess pavement to pedestrians, all while maintaining the current level of accommodation for large commercial vehicles.
Design alternative “D1”
As advocates for safer streets and sustainable transportation, we believe design alternative D1 would provide significant benefits over the other proposed alternatives for the most vulnerable Elm Square users and for the Andover community at large.
A more human-scale, pedestrian-first intersection: Elm Square is the entrance to Andover’s walkable downtown, an area flourishing with economic activity and beloved by residents. Flanking the intersection is the library, several restaurants, and other shops that see significant foot traffic. Prioritizing pedestrians at this intersection with the removal of the slip lanes further enhances the safety and comfort of those on foot. We want the downtown area to be a place that people spend time in, not somewhere they simply want to drive through.
Improved safety for people on foot: Slip (or “channelized”) right turn lanes have been shown by research studies to be unsafe for people on foot, as drivers are typically turning with higher speeds (enabled by the larger turning radius) and looking left for oncoming traffic, rather than ahead and to their right for any pedestrians crossing the slip lane. While the proposals that retain the slip lanes do call for signalization, we feel that this would only be a “half measure” for pedestrian safety, and urge the town to commit to fully removing them.
Shorter total pedestrian crossing distances: Without the removal of the slip lanes, people on foot crossing either Central St or Elm St have an extremely long— 96’ and 72’ respectively–crossing from curb to curb. Two pedestrian crossing light timings are possible under this scenario, but they both have significant issues: if the pedestrian light is timed to allow the full 95’ crossing in one phase we worry that vehicular delays would become significant; alternatively, if it is timed to only allow crossing to or from the island, it would take almost two and a half minutes for a pedestrian to cross using two complete light cycles. By implementing design D1 and eliminating the pedestrian island, people on foot would actually have a shorter total crossing distance, and the light would be timed to allow any crossing in a single light cycle.
Better able to accommodate future bicycle infrastructure: while we are disappointed that none of the proposed designs include safe accommodations for people on bicycles, the elimination of the slip lanes and pedestrian islands would better accommodate a bicycle lane without a dangerous mixing zone, and would allow for two-stage left turn bike boxes.
Walk Bike Andover supports the Elm Square design alternative “D1”, and urges the town to remove the existing slip right turn lanes–to no detriment to commercial vehicle accommodations–in its commitment to prioritizing pedestrian safety at this intersection.
Walk Bike Andover