Nashua Downtown Master Plan
Nashua River. This connection cre-
ates a new east/west route parallel to
Broad Street and Amherst Street,
and permits east/west through traffic
(from Everett Turnpike interchanges
6 and 7 to the Hollis Street/Merri-
mack River crossing) to divert from
Broad Street and Amherst Street, to
use Franklin Street and Canal Street
instead, and thereby avoid the major
congestion at the multi-leg intersec-
tion at Railroad Square. Although
the currently proposed Parkway
could redirect some of this same
through movement southward across
the new Nashua River crossing
(thereby evading the Railroad Square
location), the current plan does not
create a new east/west connection,
but simply adds the redirected
through traffic to the already high
volumes on Hollis Street and Kinsley
Street.
Local Street Connections The pre-
ferred alternative, rather than obliter-
ating street connections in the
Millyard and Tree Streets neighbor-
hood, will create a fabric of new con-
nections and small streets. The
preferred alternative will have far less
impact on local streets than the cur-
rently standing proposal, because: (1)
it will deliver only a single lane of
traffic across the Nashua River in
each direction and (2) it will disperse
its traffic to a number of local street
connections, rather than focusing
onto a single new large intersection
at Ledge Street. 81
Land Consumption The preferred
alternative will consume far less land
than the currently proposed Broad
Street Parkway. The controlled access
feature (as contrasted to the limited
access feature of the current pro-
posal) will require the taking of fewer
properties, since fronting property
value will be increased, not obliter-
ated, by the road. The more compact
geometric design of the road, mani-
fested in low design speeds, small
frequent intersections, and two-lane
cross section, will greatly reduce the
land needed for the road footprint
itself. Rather than obliterating much
of the neighborhood land at the
southern terminus, the preferred
design would restore this land to
dense urban uses.
Cost The compact right-of-way,
two-lane cross section and lack of
limited-access purchases will yield a
preferred Broad Street alternative
that is most likely a fraction of the
cost of the currently proposed alter-
native. Some individual elements of
the cost savings are likely to be spec-
tacular. For example, the structure for
the crossing of the Nashua River,
some 1,100 feet in length (4 lanes)
under the currently proposed plan,
would be less than 200 feet (2 lanes)
under the preferred alternative.
Neighborhood Impact An impor-
tant principle of the preferred alter-
native is the restoration of
