In response to complaints about truck traffic on Eighth Avenue disturbing residents, a Haverhill City Council subcommittee asked the mayor to set aside money for a traffic study last night.
Police Sgt. Kevin Lynch said, according to police department observations, an average of 71 trucks travel down the avenue between Primrose and Hale Streets. After hearing reports of trucks in the early hours of the morning, he said he visited the area at 3 a.m. on Feb. 12, and did not see any trucks until 5:30 a.m., with only seven between 5:30 and 6:30 a.m.
Joseph’s Gourmet Pasta, a long-standing business, has a loading dock in the area in question, and, Lynch said, “It’s very difficult to tell a business, ‘You can’t use your loading dock.’” Instead of a full exclusion, he recommended the city “compromise” and bar trucks from the area at night, between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. After obtaining the official traffic report, Lynch said the city must submit its recommendation to the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, which is “not a quick process.”
Councilor Shaun P. Toohey disputed Lynch’s observation that trucks do not go through the area at night, saying they could have been there Feb. 13. In response to committee Chairperson Michael S. McGonagle pointing out the area is in an industrial zone, Toohey added that, with no significant impact on businesses he could see, residents’ discomfort should weigh heavily.
“There’s more of a negative impact, Michael, if you’re sitting there, trying to sleep at two o’clock in the morning and someone’s pumping their jake brake, or [your] foundation is shuddering,” he said.
In the past 10 or 15 years, nearby businesses have grown and brought more truck traffic, according to Toohey. Though he said he is generally in favor of an hour limit rather than full exclusion, he said he did not see the problem with trucks being asked to change their routes slightly.
If trucks were fully excluded from Eighth Avenue, Lynch explained they would need to be offered parallel routes, which potentially include Mulberry, Stewart, Lancaster and Winter streets. He noted the state transportation department would not allow Winter Street because it has “an excessive amount of accidents.” Councilor Catherine P. Rogers noted that Stewart Street is narrow, and offers a poor line of sight on the turn onto Hale Street.
None of the four business owners and managers who spoke at the meeting said their trucks operate at night, with the exception of the owner of Broco Energy, Robert Brown, who said they send out some emergency vehicles in their capacity as a utility provider. He noted his company has several contracts with government agencies, including one that makes it a staging ground for the Federal Emergency Management Agency in case of a natural disaster.
Phillip DelMonti of Joseph’s Pasta said he would not mind an hour restriction. A full exclusion, however, would entail trucks going down Hale Street through an area 300 workers frequent, according to him.
Guy Bresnahan, a manager at Broco Energy who spoke at a city council meeting last April about a similar matter, cautioned councilors from “jumping to conclusions” before the completion of a traffic study. He brought up a “serial complainant” he also mentioned during the previous meeting.
“Nobody is mentioning the pinch point at the very end of Eighth Avenue, where one particular complainant was doing everything, humanly, in his power, to block the intersection—boats, double parking, trucks,” he said. “I think the sergeant will back me up on that. [He was] totally belligerent, unhelpful, to the point where, I think, one of Joseph’s trucks actually hit his car trying to make the intersection.”
Michael Malvers, who said he owns multiple businesses on Hale Street, pointed to the lack of residents at the meeting, with his sense that “one or two aggrieved people have made this a personal vendetta.”
“These residents are up in arms, and ‘oh, woe is me.’ I don’t see one of them here—nobody. We’ve been here three times over this—not one person, none,” he said. “They’re so aggrieved, [and] they can’t come to one meeting?”
Truck traffic on Eighth Avenue was initially referred to the public safety subcommittee after it came up during two city council meetings in February.