MANCHESTER RESIDENTS boarded a bus outside City Hall last week to head to Goffstown, where they spoke at a public hearing on the state Department of Transportation’s draft 10-year plan.
The push to have residents attend — which included recruiting Manchester Transit Authority to provide free transportation to the hearing — came after officials learned the fund delayed scheduled improvements at Exits 6 and 7 off Interstate 293 and longer fully funded them.
The Governor’s Advisory Commission on Intermodal Transportation , which is made up of the five executive councilors and transportation department Commissioner William Cass, is in the process of holding 25 hearings on the draft plan at locations across the state.
The project involves proposed design changes for the Amoskeag Traffic Circle and the Front Street interchanges on I-293.
The overall project has been broken into the following projects:
• preliminary engineering, including final design and right-of-way acquisition costs;
• reconstruction of Exit 6 to a Single Point Urban Interchange and the widening of I-293 to three lanes in each direction;
• reconstruction and relocation of Exit 7 to a fully directional interchange and the widening of I-293 to three lanes in each direction.
Manchester officials say the project, which was first added to the DOT’s 10-year-plan in 2013, has been fully funded in three previous versions. But they said last week that $146 million was pulled from the Manchester project.
More than a dozen people spoke at the hearing, with many asking officials to reinstate the project’s previous timeline.
Shannon MacLeod, Mayor Joyce Craig‘s chief of staff, read a letter from her boss to DOT officials.
“The project has been not only significantly delayed, but is now underfunded by approximately $146 million,” Craig wrote. “This has happened while other projects, such as Nashua-Bedford and Bow-Concord, which both entered the plan years after this project, saw additional funding.”
Bill Oldenburg, NHDOT project development director, clarified that information at the hearing last week.
“You might have heard the funding has been eliminated or decreased on these two projects — it hasn’t,” Oldenburg said. “They’re both fully funded, both projects are in the plan for the full amount of money, but because some of the construction for Exit 6 is shown outside this 10-year plan it doesn’t show. It shows as being ‘funding needed.’
“This plan goes to 2034. Some of this work — $146 million of this work at Exit 6 — is shown in 2035 to 2036,” Oldenburg said. “The funding’s still there, it’s just shown outside this 10-year plan.”
In the city’s 2021 master plan, officials identified Hackett Hill as an ideal location for an “innovation village” to support the region’s biotech industry and to develop housing.
“Regrettably, the development of this parcel of land, which spans 125 acres, is impossible without a redesigned Exit 6-7,” Craig wrote. “The width and clearance of the two-lane bridge beneath the (Everett) Turnpike inhibit us from unlocking the potential of one of the few remaining undeveloped, sizable land parcels in the city.”
Craig also stressed the importance of renovating Exits 6-7 to the city’s “safety and well-being.”
“Anyone who has taken this exit knows how dangerous and unsafe it is, and as our community continues to grow, it is only going to get worse,” Craig wrote. “With over 2,000 housing units in development, most within a mile of this exit, the need for a redesigned exit is clear.
“It is deeply disappointing that the New Hampshire Department of Transportation has chosen to reallocate funding from existing, necessary, safety-oriented projects within Manchester,” Craig wrote. “I urge you to reconsider reallocating funding to this project and returning it to its originally-proposed construction schedule, supporting our efforts to ensure the safety, prosperity, and growth of our city, residents and visitors.”
Ward 12 Alderman Erin George-Kelly told NHDOT officials she’s received many calls and emails from residents.
“The constituents in my ward are concerned greatly about the safety issues that the delay in construction on exits 6 and 7 will continue to have in our community,” George-Kelly said. “This includes both traffic backups and continued issues with merging and exiting safely from the highway.
“There are individuals who live in this area who use these exits daily and need the construction to happen on the timeline that was originally promised,” she said. “I kindly request that you reconsider this timeline due to the negative impact it continues to have on our community of Manchester.”
Brian Bicknell, president of Manchester Community College, testified the proposed work at exits 6 and 7 is “a really big deal for us.”
“If you come to Manchester Community College or try to come off campus, it’s an ordeal on the safety side,” Bicknell said. “Also, based on the previous assumptions, we were in the process of writing our 10-year plan — our master plan — and the exits 6 and 7 (projects) would have a dramatic effect on how our campus would look.
“This being pushed means redoing our whole 10 year plan,” Bicknell said.
Tim Clougherty, public works director for Manchester, said the proposed work has been factored into the 10-year plan for more than a decade.
“I personally was involved with it prior to 2013, and we celebrated when it was actually included in the 2013 plan,” Clougherty said. “My mother asks me about it on a regular basis. She lives on Hackett Hill, travels that area. I haven’t told her yet about the draft delay. I’m concerned about her reaction.
“It’s not safe by any stretch of the imagination,” Clougherty said. “The accident data and the fatality numbers support the necessity for this project.”
Here is the project schedule at this point (dates tentative and subject to change):
• Summer 2029: Hold a public informational meeting;
• Fall 2029: Make final revision to Environmental Assessment, receive finding of No Significant Impact;
• Fall 2029 to Fall 2034: Initiate Final Design Phase, Right-of-Way acquisitions/easements, environmental permitting;
• Anticipated start of Spring 2033: Exit 7 construction phase;
• Anticipated start of Spring 2035: Exit 6 construction phase.
Manchester officials invited NHDOT Commissioner William Cass to a meeting of the Board of Mayor and Aldermen to discuss the proposed delay. In an email last week, Cass declined the request, saying its timing “puts us in somewhat of an awkward position.”
“The Governor’s Advisory Commission on Intermodal Transportation (GACIT) are currently in the process of holding public hearings around the state to receive public input on the draft Ten Year Plan,” Cass writes. “GACIT will then be deliberating the input received and making a final recommendation to the governor by the end of November. The city’s request for a briefing to express their concerns outside of the GACIT Hearings while it is being deliberated is untimely.”
