Copyright keenesentinel
The N.H. Department of Transportation has agreed to hold a public meeting next week to discuss traffic safety problems on Route 9 in Keene and Chesterfield. The Nov. 4 meeting will be held at 1 p.m. at Heberton Hall in the Keene Public Library. City Councilor Randy Filiault asked for the session in a note sent on Aug. 18, the day after a multi-vehicle crash injured several people on a stretch of that highway. Seven people went to hospitals after a a car crossed the centerline and veered into oncoming traffic, police said. “Over the last couple of years, automobile accidents on Route 9 between Keene and Brattleboro, Vermont, seem to have increased in volume and severity, including an extremely serious accident on Aug. 17 that resulted in a mass casualty incident being declared as our first responders available were overwhelmed and both fire stations were completely emptied of personnel,” Filiault said in a letter to Mayor Jay Kahn and the City Council asking that the city request the meeting. A report the Governor’s Special Task Force on Highway Safety released Oct. 8 lists Route 9 as among the New Hampshire roads with the most crashes. Route 9, which includes the stretch from Brattleboro to Keene, had 4,152 crashes from 2017 to 2023, according to the report. The route extends east to Hillsboro. Filiault said in an interview Tuesday that distracted driving and speeding are two significant problems. One possibility to improve safety on Route 9 could be adding rumble strips, uneven pavement that alerts a driver when their car is drifting over the centerline, he said. “Rumble strips have a tendency to get your attention pretty quick,” Filiault said. “Would something like putting rumble strips down the yellow line be an effective way of getting drivers’ attention?” Rumble strips can themselves be controversial among people who live near a highway and are sensitive to the noise made when tires hit them. About a decade ago, some rumble strips along the fog line on Route 9 were removed for this reason. Some were also removed from the center section of the highway in some areas but left in place in others. Since then, the technology for noise-making strips on highways has advanced, and there is a way pavement can be altered — so called “mumble strips” — that can alert drivers to lane departures but are billed as not creating too much noise. Also to be discussed at the meeting is the intersection of Routes 9 and 63 in Chesterfield, which has been a trouble spot for crashes, he said. “Any and all questions and solutions are going to be welcome at the meeting,” Filiault said. “It starts the conversation because clearly the amount of traffic accidents and the severity on Route 9 have really gone through the roof over the last couple years, and we just can’t continue this trend. We have to do something about it.”
