On Oct. 2, the Londonderry Planning Board heard a presentation on the traffic impact of the Village at Technology Hill Planned Use Development. Engineer, Nick Golan, of TFMoran and TFMoran President, Bob Duval, attended the meeting to give an overview of what changes to local traffic Technology Hill could have on the town.
“There’s a manufacturing component on the east, a daycare center, a small office, and a small shopping plaza. That all together makes up the project, the Village on Technology Hill,” Duval explained. “Basically, the whole site is at the east end of the airport on the north part of town.”
He went on to say that every component of the project had its own impact on surrounding traffic patterns and added that the surrounding roads gave the area multiple entry points to distribute the traffic on work days. The development has two primary entrances near Akira Way and Kitty Hawk Landing.
“Signage will be a key element to make sure that we have folks traveling where they’re supposed to,” said Golan.
Trip generation measurements estimated around 490 morning and 540 evening trips from the completed development. However, he was optimistic those numbers would be lower due to the “internal capture” of residents staying and working within the Village.
Londonderry’s Engineering Director, John Trottier, noted that traffic is always an “interesting subject” with large-scale projects in town, and there was an earlier traffic scoping meeting to address the issue.
“This project fits comfortably in the existing network and has room to spare for future development either offsite or onsite,” said Duval.
He did not think traffic mitigation would be needed, even after looking at ten-year predictions. The proposal did include adding left-turn lanes at the intersections of Technology Road/Harvey Road and Kitty Hawk Landing/Grenier Fiel Road. Evan Drew from Stantec, who had years of experience reviewing traffic around Londonderry, confirmed much of what was presented and stated that studies had also been done at alternatively adding turn lanes to the intersection at Akira Way/Harvey Road.
“Our suggestion was to monitor for the future at Akira,” said Drew. “Let’s discuss, maybe it does make sense to put it at Akira, maybe it induces demand, there’s all of these other factors. With planning and traffic studies there’s a lot of assumptions.”
TFMoran did not want to interfere with an existing traffic calming project on Mammoth Road. Members of the Planning Board had a few questions.
“What is the agreement on the need for a left run lane?” asked Secretary, Lynn Wiles. “We’re going to leave it as-is for the foreseeable future until traffic dictates we do something different?”
The Town Engineer and the Golan stated this was not the case. They only wanted to gather more information to see if a left turn lane should be added at Akira Way or Technology Road. Currently, studies favor the latter option.
Dave and Patrica Robins of 532 Mammoth Rd. also sent an email to the Planning Board saying homeowners in the area were “seeking a solution to the growing speed and traffic issues” in the area. The couple worried about some of the changes the traffic study would make to Mammoth and Page Roads and how adding a four-way stop would make noise problems worse.
The Londonderry Planning Board unanimously voted to approve the traffic plan conditionally.
The Board is scheduled to meet again on Wednesday, Nov. 6 at 7 p.m. in the Moose Hill Conference Room.