An aerial overview of the three miles of West Hollis Street that will be studied for safety improvements. Courtesy image/Hoyle Tanner and Associates

NASHUA – For the next several months, city traffic officials will be working with civil engineering firm Hoyle Tanner and Associates to enhance traffic safety along the busy West Hollis Street corridor.

Stephen Haas, senior transportation engineer at Hoyle Tanner, said the study area includes nearly all of West Hollis Street spanning three miles from the Hollis town line to Riverside Street.

“It’s a very long corridor,” he said during the Feb. 6 meeting.

Haas said there are more than 45 intersections within the study area. Fifteen of them have been targeted for further analysis.

To describe the current road conditions, he divided the study area into five segments.

The first segment runs 3,800 feet from the Hollis town line to Marina Drive. Haas said the traffic lanes are 12 feet wide along that stretch of roadway and there is currently no infrastructure for bicycles or pedestrians.

The second segment runs 3,500 feet from Marina Drive to Four Hills Landfill.

“The key change here is the width of the travel lanes,” said Haas, adding that the traffic lanes expand to 15 feet wide.

Yet, there is only limited infrastructure for bicycles and pedestrians.

Looking at the 2,600-foot segment from Four Hills Landfill to Mandinbarb Circle, Haas said the width of the traffic lanes is reduced to 11 feet while the shoulder width increases to 10 feet. However, there is no bicycle infrastructure.

Moving closer to downtown, there is a center turn lane along the 2,500-foot section from Mandinbarb Circle to Gendron Street. There are also five-foot shoulders and partial bicycle lanes.

The final 1,600-foot stretch runs from Gendron Street to Riverside Street. Along that section, there are four traffic lanes with each lane being 11 feet wide. There are also signed bicycle lanes and sidewalks.

Haas also shared the results of the traffic study that Hoyle Tanner conducted in June 2023.

“We wanted to make sure we were still capturing school traffic,” said Haas, adding that traffic was monitored 24 hours a day for one week.

The results showed that an average of 15,800 vehicles passed through the Wellesley Road area every day while the volume fell back to 8,800 vehicles per day at the Hollis town line.

There were also 76 crashes reported along West Hollis Street from January 2020 to July 2023. Haas called attention to the crash that occurred in front of Fotene’s Market in November 2019, which resulted in the death of 55-year-old Richard Murphy. He also said serious injuries were reported from a motorcycle crash in July 2022 at Westgate Crossing.

Therefore, Haas suggested the possibility of installing roundabouts to begin the process of making West Hollis Street safer,

“Roundabouts are really great for reducing crashes,” he said, adding that roundabouts are proven to reduce crash rates by up to 40 percent.

Haas also said that unlike traffic signals, a specific traffic volume is not required to install a roundabout.

Another option is on-street parking.

“Having parked cars on the street is a deterrent to speed,” said Haas.

Paula Johnson of Westborn Drive said she was primarily concerned about the bottleneck at MicroSociety Academy Charter School.

“Those cars cannot get in and out and you have kids in those cars,” she said. “We need to fix that area before anything else.”

Johnson also said the Riverside Street intersection is a significant hazard given its proximity to Nashua High School South.

“There are accidents all the time when those kids get out of the high school,” she said. “That is a nightmare, a total nightmare.”

From the 76 crashes that were reported, 18 percent of them were at Riverside Street.

Robert Maffia of Settlement Way said drivers use the turn lanes as passing lanes.

“They’re not doing 45, they’re 55-60,” he said. “My wife was coming home, she was heading west in the right lane, not the turning lane, and a couple of pickup trucks flew right by her and missed her side view mirror by a foot.”

Kellie Biggs of West Hollis Street said there were three occasions when she almost got hit.

“Turning is horrendous if you’re going to go down Gendron Street,” she said. “You take your life in your hands.”

Ward 5 Alderman Ernest Jette said he has been hearing concerns about West Hollis Street for the past six years ago.

“It’s a very complicated affair,” he said. “It’s taken this long to get the study going.”

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