Dozens of residents of Hunt Road in Peterborough have petitioned the town for a slower speed limit and additional stop signs to resolve traffic issues on the road.
With the approaching closure of the Main Street bridge for repairs this fall, Hunt Road is one of the likely detours, something residents fear will only compound “long-standing issues,” Hunt Road resident Geoffrey Taylor said in an interview Thursday.
The Peterborough Select Board is scheduled to discuss the issue in a public hearing on Tuesday to consider amendments to the traffic code related to Hunt Avenue and Hunt Road.
Taylor is one of 35 people who live on or adjacent to Hunt Road who submitted the petition to the town asking for the speed limit to be lowered, and for stop signs to be added at the intersection at Currier Road and Hunt Road, and at the intersection of Hunt Road and the Hunt Road connector to Route 202.
“Hunt Road is a scenic road, and it has a lot of pedestrians and bicyclists,” Taylor said. “There are bad sight-lines and several sharp curves.”
The petition requests the town conduct a traffic study and create a remediation plan to resolve some of the issues.
Though the petition does not address it, Taylor said along with speeding, heavy truck traffic is an issue on the road, which he said isn’t conducive to oversized vehicles. It’s something he thinks will become even more of an issue with the closure of the bridge.
“I wouldn’t want to meet a tractor-trailer coming down that road,” he said.
The police department has done its own assessment of Hunt Road and Hunt Avenue, Peterborough Police Chief Scott Guinard said Tuesday, and will be bringing forth a set of recommendations to the Select Board during the Tuesday hearing.
According to a memo sent from Guinard to the town, the recommendations include prohibiting commercial vehicles above 20,000 pounds on Hunt Road, lowering the speed from 30 miles per hour to 25 miles per hour, and adding two additional stop signs at the intersection of Hunt Road and Hunt Avenue, making that intersection a three-way stop.
In the memo, Guinard wrote Hunt Road, at its narrowest points, is only 20 feet wide, leaving only a 10-foot travel lane, compared to the 12 or 14 feet lanes typical in Peterborough. The sight distance is limited in several locations due to curves or vegetation in the roadway, and the average speed of vehicles is 27 miles per hour.
“Do people speed on that road from time to time, yes they do, as they do on all roads in town,” Guinard said Tuesday.
Guinard said the recommendations would be to address a “number of issues.”
Taylor said there are still other traffic-calming elements he’d like to see implemented, such as a platform-style speed bump similar to those installed on Union Street. His wife, Cornelia Taylor, said she thinks the police department recommendations will address most of the issues raised by the residents of the road, should the Select Board decide to implement them.
The public hearing on the amendment to the vehicle and traffic code on Tuesday at 5 p.m. in the Town House. All interested parties may attend or submit comments prior to the date of the hearing.