Portsmouth's Aldrich Road residents pushing city to slow drivers get response they wanted

PORTSMOUTH — Aldrich Road residents once again lobbied city officials to slow speeders who use their residential neighborhood as a shortcut.

Multiple residents turned out at a recent meeting to ask the city to install more speed humps on Aldrich Road, which connects Islington Street to Middle Road.

Mayor Deaglan McEachern shared good news Monday afternoon, saying funding to add two more speed humps to the road have already been approved and the work has been scheduled.

"The project is going to start in the fall and is scheduled to finish before the snow falls," McEachern said.

Trisha Anderson, who lives at 328 Aldrich Road with her family, including three young children, recently told the city's Parking, Traffic and Safety committee members she's “begging you to please add additional speed bumps at Aldrich Road, as I’ve begged for the last three or four years.”

“Aldrich, as many people know, is used as a cut-through street,” she said. “We’re filled with walkers and runners and bikers. There are tons of children on that street.”

There are no stop signs on Aldrich, Anderson said, which allows cars to speed up as they go down the road.

“It’s very, very dangerous,” she added.

There is one speed hump on Aldrich toward the Middle Road end, but Anderson reminded committee members city officials promised residents two more during a meeting in August 2022.

“I feel this is a dangerous situation and I worry about their safety and the safety of the other children, and I do not want anything tragic to happen,” she said.

Residents provide chorus of calls for safety

Ann Swan, who lives at 311 Aldrich, said cars are “still going way too fast, coming down the road,” even with the one speed hump.

“I purposely make people aggravated and go only 20 miles an hour,” she told the committee.

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Once drivers pass the one existing speed hump, she and others said, they speed up.

“Please put another speed hump on our street for the safety of the 10 children on that side of the road,” Swan said.“I think another speed bump would make people aware as they come down the street to slow down.”

Fellow Aldrich Road resident Debora Mayer lives there with her special-needs adult son, she said.

She’s noticed that more people are parking on the street on Aldrich in an attempt “to calm the traffic and make it go slower.”

“It has absolutely not worked. Cars are going fast and it’s even more dangerous in my opinion because there’s a very narrow passage,” she said. “And people are going really fast through there.”

Gerald Smith lived on South Street for more than 40 years, which has its owns speeding issues, before moving to Aldrich.

“A speed hump helps ... for 100 feet on either side of it,” he said. “I would recommend multiple speed humps, so a car never has a chance to accelerate.”

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During a visit to Aldrich Road Monday, a driver sped by and passed a reporter on a double yellow line as he drove slowly through the neighborhood.

Mayor urges drivers to go slow

McEachern acknowledged that “speeding is one of Portsmouth’s biggest localized issues. The hard thing when it comes to traffic is cars will go as fast as they feel comfortable going unless sometimes you force them to slow down."

He encouraged drivers “to go as slow as possible” when driving on Portsmouth streets and to “think about the safety of everyone’s kids.”

As a father of young children, McEachern said, he takes the issue of speeding through neighborhoods “incredibly seriously.”

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Portsmouth NH Aldrich Road to get more speed humps