Haverhill City Councilor Melinda Barrett.
Haverhill city councilors will help resolve increased traffic level concerns from Laurel Avenue residents about bus access routes, and of motorists allegedly making traffic light bypasses through their neighborhood.
The council Tuesday night referred discussion on the matter raised by Councilor Melinda Barrett to its Traffic and Safety committee, which is expected to notify the Merrimack Valley Regional Transit Authority (MVRTA) by letter. Barrett said street speed and signage is one issue for review.
“Laurel Ave. has become a more frequent cut through, due to the lights on South Main. So, the volume has increased of both regular commercial traffic and regular automobile traffic. There are currently no speed limit signs heading north, away from the fire station. And there’s one, it looks like a homemade speed sign, going south towards the fire station,” Barrett said.
Haverhill City Councilor William H. Ryan.
Laurel Avenue resident John Welch told councilors buses have continued to use the street as access to its garage facility since the Comeau Bridge reconstruction project was completed. He said he street is “outrageously a speed zone” for buses and other neighbors he met with are “done with it.”
“The projects been done for years, yet they’re so used to flying up these streets and flying down them. I mean it’s absurd. 5 o’ clock in the morning to 7 o’ clock in the morning, I’m talking 30 buses, ‘wham wham wham.’ Seven o’clock at night to 8 o’clock; 9 o’clock at night same thing, they’re just racing down to get the buses back into the garage,” Welch said.
Councilor William H. Ryan also suggested MVRTA officials could balance out access routes and drivers to “not overburden any one neighborhood.”
City Councilor Mary Ellen Daly O’Brien urged Welch to be patient, saying the wheels of government turn slowly.
I have one question. The MVRTA houses and maintains their buses in Bradford. They have buses that go to Boston every day. Why do people have to go to Lawrence to get the bus to Boston? Greyhound always picked up on Washington St, and now we have locally housed authority that we can’t even use?? Something doesn’t focus there.