More than 6,000 use North-South Road daily during holiday weekend

More than 6,000 vehicles a day used the new North-South Road over the holiday weekend. Columbus Day Weekend, traditionally one of the busiest of the year in Mount Washington Valley, once again brought bumper-to-bumper traffic to Route 16 and 302 for portions of Sunday, when it rained all day."The road was used quite a bit," Lt. Jeff Dicey, of Conway Police Department, said, "but every road in the state had lot of traffic on it. With the three-day weekend, foliage and shopping, we knew it would be busy. The rain on Sunday obviously didn't help (with the traffic). Whenever it rains things tend to come to a standstill."The local 2.8 mile road, which opened at the end of August, is doing just what everyone had hoped, alleviating traffic congestion on Route 16. Traffic control officers reported no "major backups" over the past weekend except during Sunday's rain.Police monitored traffic flow daily basis on the road for the past two weeks with its monitoring unit, which counts every vehicle that passes and records its speed. Police used the device generally from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. each day. On Monday, between 5:45 a.m. and 6:15 p.m., 6,257 vehicles passed over the road at the southern entrance (near Wal-Mart). There were 4,400 recorded on Sunday from 5:45 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. (the machine, which operates on solar power, was brought back to the station due to cloud cover and rain). No data was record on Friday or Saturday, but there were 5,262 on the road Thursday and 4,782 on it last Wednesday.During Fryeburg Fair week, the weekend averaged between 5,400 and 6,100 vehicles, with the high mark actually coming during the week, Wednesday, Oct. 3 , with 6,153. During the first week the road was open, traffic averaged roughly 4,000 vehicles a day.According to N.H. Department of Transportation records, the North Conway strip last year averaged between 27,000 and 29,000 vehicles a day during weekends in the fall. "It'll be interesting to see what sort of data we get from the state for September," Dicey said. "I'd like to compare this year with last year. While I think the North-South Road is helping, I also kind of think you won't see a reduction of traffic (on the strip). I don't think we're going to see 5,000 to 6,000 less vehicles on a daily basis. One thing I've noticed over the years is more roads tend to bring in more people."Police have been regularly patrolling the new road to try to slow motorists down. "We still have an issue with speeding," Dicey said. "Just about everyone is traveling the road at a good rate of speed. We're consistently seeing that people are traveling on average between 44-46 in the 40 miles per hour zone. It's a little bit higher in the 30 miles per hour stretch."