Oct. 24—Manchester officials are urging city residents to attend a public hearing this week in Goffstown on the state Department of Transportation's draft 10-year plan. That push came after officials learned scheduled improvements at Exits 6 and 7 off Interstate 293 are no longer fully funded, which could delay the work until 2033 at the earliest.
And the city is providing free transportation to the meeting.
The Governor's Advisory Commission on Intermodal Transportation (GACIT), which is made up of the five executive councilors and William Cass, commissioner of the New Hampshire Department of Transportation (NHDOT), will hold a public hearing on the draft plan Wednesday at 7 p.m. at Goffstown Fire Station #18, 18 Church St., in the 2nd floor meeting room.
The project involves proposed design changes for the Amoskeag Traffic Circle and the Front Street interchanges on I-293.
The overall project has been broken into the following projects: preliminary engineering including final design and Right-of-Way acquisition costs; the reconstruction of Exit 6 to a Single Point Urban Interchange (SPUI) and the widening of I-293 to three lanes in each direction; reconstruction and relocation of Exit 7 to a fully directional interchange and the widening of I-293 to three lanes in each direction.
Manchester officials say the project was first added to the DOT's 10-year-plan in 2013, and has been fully funded in three previous versions of the plan, but $146 million was pulled from the Manchester project.
"It is deeply disappointing that the New Hampshire Department of Transportation has chosen to reallocate funding from existing, necessary, safety-oriented projects within Manchester," Mayor Joyce Craig said in a statement. "This decision by the NHDOT and the Executive Council will have devastating impacts on Manchester's ability for future growth, and the safety of our residents, and visitors. I encourage residents to attend this meeting and urge the NHDOT and Councilor Gatsas to reconsider reallocating funding to this project, instead returning it to its originally-proposed construction schedule, supporting our efforts to ensure the safety, prosperity, and growth of our city."
In a letter to William Watson with the DOT's Bureau of Planning and Community Assistance, Craig writes the project has been recognized as "critical to provide sweeping safety and traffic mitigation improvements."
"The project has been not only significantly delayed, but is now underfunded by approximately $146 million," writes Craig. "This has happened while other projects, such as Nashua-Bedford and Bow-Concord, which both entered the plan years after this project, saw additional funding."