State, town contemplate safety improvements at North-South Road intersections

Blinkers, warning signs, markings in road, four-way stop signs among options being considered

Four-way stop signs? Flashing lights?Those are some of the ideas being tossed around for improving safety at North-South Road intersections in North Conway Village.Jac Cuddy, chairman of Citizens Design Review Committee, broached the subject at Tuesday's committee meeting, just hours after an accident at the intersection of Grove Street and North-South Road. A Grove Street resident traveling east on Grove Street apparently failed to stop at the stop sign, according to police, and struck a van that was southbound on North-South Road. The drivers of both vehicles suffered minor injuries."I brought it up early on in the meeting because I knew about the accident," Cuddy said yesterday. "What I did was present a lot of information that has been given to me by various people, and concerns of people who utilize the North-South Road. We talked about four-way stop signs and blinkers and so on and so forth. Some of the committee members felt enforcement was the issue, and that people need to realize through the process that stop signs are there and they need to pay attention to them."Cuddy believes something needs to be done while people who travel the side streets get used to the stop signs at North-South Road intersections. His personal recommendation is to put up temporary blinkers that flash yellow for North-South Road motorists and red for people on the side streets."Seavey, Grove and Kearsarge have been flow-through traffic roads for a hundred years, and the stop signs are something new," Cuddy said. "People can just be driving and totally forget about it. If there was a blinker or something there, that would serve as a reminder."The idea of four-way stop signs was also discussed, but, Cuddy said, "Some of the committee members were against it because they felt it would just inhibit the traffic flow too greatly."Cuddy said selectmen shouldn't "sit back and wait for reports coming back from the police department" before taking steps to improve safety at the intersections."If they talk to people who live down there, they would find out there's been a ton of near misses, and those don't show up in any police report," Cuddy said. "They need to seriously think about doing something, even on a temporary basis, be it a blinker, just to alert people to the situation, or making sure police are there enforcing people who are rolling through the stop signs."Lt. Jeff Dicey said yesterday Conway Police Department is putting "as much effort as we can into enforcing the laws for the new road," but he also pointed out that "by adding one more road, we get stretched out much thinner, and we still have to maintain enforcement on the other roads as well."The thing of it is," Dicey said, "no matter how many devices you put up there, there's always going to be an accident. It is the responsibility of drivers to be conscious of their surroundings. We still have accidents at the four corners in Conway, and there are four traffic lights there."Dicey doesn't see the Depot Road, Grove Street, Seavey Street and Kearsarge Road intersections as being all that dangerous, as long as people heed the stop signs. He thinks the greatest potential for problems is at Artist Falls Road."There's a speed change, it's downhill at the intersection, and some of the view is obstructed," he said.Dicey said he would "welcome" a blinking light or any other measure that would improve safety at the intersections, but, he reiterated, "A lot of it goes to the operators, too."Don Lyford, of N.H. Department of Transportation, said his department will be looking at various options."We'll talk with our traffic people to see what they think," Lyford said. "There are no advance signs that say, "Stop Sign Ahead.' Maybe we need to add that, or add something on the pavement that says 'Stop Sign Ahead.' There are lot of things we could do to get people to pay attention. What's tough on the side roads is that people have been going through there forever without having to stop."Four-way stop signs will also be "part of the discussion," Lyford said, but, he added, "I don't think it's a good solution myself."The whole purpose (of North-South Road) is to give through-traffic a better chance to move," Lyford said. "If you stop them on the local road at every intersection, then they're going to start to back up. That defeats the purpose of building it, at least in the village. If you can get people to stop on the side roads, I think it will function much better without a four-way stop."North-South Road will eventually be turned over to the town but is still a state road at this time. Lyford said any safety measures that are taken in conjunction with North-South Road would probably be funded by the state, but would only be done in "concurrence" with the town.