By Erin Tiernan — Erin@concordbridge.org
Downtown Concord has “safety issues” when it comes to keeping pedestrians and bicyclists out of harm’s way and the town is mobilizing to change that, officials say.
Of the 20 Concord crashes involving pedestrians hit by cars between 2019 and 2023, 13 happened downtown, state Department of Transportation and Concord Police data show.
The town saw five crashes involving bicyclists or on foot in 2019, six in 2020, two in 2021, three in 2022, and four in 2023.
The intersection of Main and Walden Streets saw the highest number of collisions involving pedestrians, with five total across the five-year period.
“We’re seeing a good effort to try to address the safety issues for pedestrians at that spot now, where there’s a lot going on and vehicles going fairly fast,” said Philip Posner, a member of the town’s Transportation Advisory Committee.
Police Captain Brian Goldman said the town has mostly avoided serious injury or fatalities from crashes in the downtown area.
“I would call it an area of crashes with high volume, low speed,” Goldman said, “Luckily, it doesn’t have terrible endings, but it does have a higher volume than other places.”
The last pedestrian death was in 2020 at the corner of Thoreau and Main Streets, according to police data.
The big picture
Posner said his committee is working to identify areas like the intersection of Main and Walden to avoid a tragedy.
He said the TAC is working with the town’s Planning and Engineering Departments and a third-party consultant to identify road maintenance needs — which Posner said have been long underfunded — and gather and interpret crash data.
The “big picture,” Posner said, is to target potential problem roadways in the town and create a construction schedule to make improvements that could head off collisions and injuries.
It will be at least a year until that work is done, he said.
Crashes involving pedestrians have been increasing nationwide, and Posner pegs faster driving and bigger cars as part of the problem.
Though the trend hasn’t affected Concord — for now — Posner said town data shows there is still work to be done to limit collisions involving cars and people biking or on foot. Physical changes like the ones happening at the corner of Walden and Main Streets that put curbs between people and cars help, he said.
“We want both Concord Center downtown and West Concord Village to be vibrant,” he said.
“In order for these places to keep attracting people and business, making people feel safe is really important.”
