Portsmouth has terrible plan for Congress Street: Letters

Portsmouth plan will make Congress Street problems worse

Aug. 26 - To the Editor:

Portsmouth has been encouraging and experiencing an housing boom these last few years, and with it an increase in traffic.

The newly passed plan to remove a travel lane on Congress Street is a mistake. Traffic behaves like a fluid in a pipe — one cannot force more in until some is let out. Reducing capacity by removing a travel lane will act like a funnel, with increased numbers of cars causing back-ups and jams.

I wonder if the committee making this recommendation even bothered to consult a traffic engineer on how to address our traffic efficiency.

I would bet that with a traffic study vs. pedestrian study, one would find that on any given day of the year (with the obvious exception of Market Square Da