September 27, 2007

Traffic jam
Lawsuits, budgets and why the I-93 commute isn’t getting better
By Lisa Brown lbrown@hippopress.com

Traffic along Interstate 93 is like a bad cold — terribly congested and feverishly frustrating.

More bad news: there might be no real antidote, at least not one with long-term effects. I-93 is old and tired and more. Its bones are deteriorating, its ramps and bridges dangerously in need of repair. Motorists who travel between Manchester and the Massachusetts border on a regular basis are not going to see any significant change for a while. With the state’s Department of Transportation fighting for every dollar in its budget, Commissioner Charles O’Leary can only hope to stop some of the bleeding. Red-listed bridges and ramps and projects that have been in the pipeline are getting priority. The long-heralded I-93 Widening Project, which has been in the works for more than 23 years, is getting a second look, in part because of a recent court order, and secondly because O’Leary now says the project is too costly and unrealistic as planned years ago.

Rush hour
The original widening project that was conceived in the 1980s called for the doubling of the lane capacity of I-93 from two lanes in each direction to four lanes in each direction between Manchester and the border of Massachusetts. When the project was first designed, it was projected to cost $400 million, but because of a string of delays rangig from environmental studies to a recent lawsuit, the proposal to widen the southern corridor is now expected to cost $700 million.

When I-93 was built in the early 1960s, the lifespan of newly built highways was estimated to be between 35 and 50 years, depending on many variables, among them population growth and vehicle traffic. When I-93 was built, it was designed to handle between 50,000 and 60,000 vehicles a day. Now, almost 50 years later, in some areas such as Salem that number has doubled. Recent studies show that at peak traffic hours more than 110,000 vehicles pound the pavement through Salem’s exit each day.

With only two lanes in each direction to handle that amount, the going is slow and dangerous.

“Traffic along this stretch of I-93 far exceeds on a daily basis what the road was designed to carry. Motorists have very little margin for error,” Boynton said. “There’s an ongoing high risk of a major incident that could shut down the highway and cause significant disruption.”

New Hampshire DOT officials spent years holding public hearings, conducting environmental studies and impact studies and meeting with local communities between Manchester and Salem before coming up with a widening project that could be agreed on. Finally, in June 2005, The Federal Highway Administration issued a Record of Decision (a green light) authorizing the funding and construction of the four additional lanes. The DOT operates on what is called a 10-year plan, which is approved every two years. This October would have been the start date for the widening project. But in February 2006 the Conservation Law Foundation filed a lawsuit against the Federal Highway Agency and the Department of Transportation charging the agencies with violating the Environmental Policy Act by refusing to consider commuter rail as part of a solution to traffic congestion.

Heavy congestion
“We were charging that their [DOT] analysis of transportation alternatives was flawed,” said Tom Irwin, senior attorney for the New Hampshire office of the Conservation Law Foundation. “The most pivotal [flaws], for assessing the benefits of this highway and for assessing net traffic impact, [were] using flawed data and inaccurate low population data.”

The suit alleged “induced growth,” which means that with more lanes of traffic more people would move to New Hampshire and thus use the highway. Irwin says the bottom line is that the state would be right back in a bottleneck by the year 2020.

“That, in our view, makes the case that we can’t just add lanes and expect to solve this problem, we need a more balanced transportation system to address congestion issues in the southern part of the state,” Irwin said.

The CLF was hoping for a court mandate that the DOT consider rail in its traffic congestion mitigation equation. It didn’t get that, but it did get a judge’s order, issued last month, stating that the Department of Transportation did use flawed data.

“If you want to boil it down, we believe the DOT engaged in planning with blinders on. They only looked at the highway, not secondary roads, and they didn’t truly look at rail as a solution, which we continue to believe is a solution to congestion,” Irwin said.

The Department of Transportation does not agree with the CLF.

“We did consider rail and we are preserving the corridor for a future rail option,” said Bill Boynton, a spokesman for the NH Department of Transportation. “We did not see the value of building the train now versus the amount of cost and what additional traffic may or may not be off the road.”

In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Paul Barbadoro did find fault with the DOT data, and ordered the state to prepare a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement. With better numbers, they might obtain a clearer picture of how the widening could affect secondary roads and air quality in communities along the 20-mile stretch of highway. He did not mandate considering a rail option.

The court delay has left many elected officials in Salem frustrated.

“Officials in Salem have supported the widening of I-93 for many years ... I remember going to meetings back in the 1990s and [I] felt the project was imminent; it has been much anticipated,” said Ross Moldoff, planning director for the town of Salem. “The tremendous backups at Exit 1 where the road narrows from four to two lanes [north from Massachusetts border to Salem] — the selectman and planning board and groups involved in planning would all say this [widening] is what we need.”

Moldoff doesn’t buy the argument from the CLF that the widening will burden the community because of induced growth.

“I’m one who is skeptical,” Moldoff said. “I don’t know how you can project the population will increase.” Moldoff said residents in Salem live there because they like the community, not because of a highway.

“It doesn’t make any difference if they widen it or not,” Moldoff said. “There is growth and there is only so much land left to build on; I don’t think its population is going to increase just because you add a lane or two.”

Stop and go
The Department of Transportation has been given until October to comply with the judge’s order for the supplemental EIS. In the meantime, work along I-93 that was already underway continues.

“There are projects along the corridor underway now that are not related to whether or not the highway is widened,” Boynton said. “Including park-and-rides at Exits 5 and 2 and work on Exit 1 ... projects not necessarily related to the widening of the highways.”

Ironically, most of the work that is being done is the replacement of red-list bridges along the I-93 Exit 1 area.

“Whether or not the road is an additional two lanes should not impact the type of work we are doing there,” Boynton said. The bridge work was already scheduled before the Minnesota bridge collapse earlier this summer. “They were already on the schedule, and now certainly we want to get to these sooner rather than later, but nothing has changed,” Boynton said.

Construction ahead
The original I-93 widening project that was approved in 2005 called for most of the widening to happen at once. But times have changed. Earlier this year, Carol Murray, who was the transportation commissioner back when the project was approved, was forced to resign. In her place, Governor Lynch brought back former Transportation Commissioner Charles O’Leary, who served from 1990 to 1996. O’Leary says the I-93 widening project which comes under the umbrella of the current ten-year plan is too big.

“If we add no new projects, it would take us 35 years to complete the plan that is currently in law because the cost of these projects [which include the I-93 widening project] have now far exceeded the costs of available funding,” Boynton said.

The cost of funding the current ten-year plan is only one spoke in the financial wheel that is about to fall off at the Department of Transportation. Last week Commissioner O’Leary painted a grim financial picture for his department, and he says unless there are increases in tolls or the gas tax there will be people out of work.

“We are facing a funding crisis in just about every aspect of the DOT,” Boynton said. “The I-93 project remains the number- one priority, but the funding limitations we have will not allow us to build it at the same pace as we had projected.”

Once the courts are satisfied, the I-93 widening project will begin. Commissioner O’Leary has called for a phasing in of the project.

“It’s been redefined already, the Commissioner is looking to phase it in because he doesn’t want a 20-mile work zone and he doesn’t have the funding,” Boynton said.