When it comes to land use or economics, things that are uh other planning exercises that are not specifically related to transportation, we don't have a dedicated funding mechanism for that.

So what we would do is work with the town to identify sort of scope of work and a budget for for doing uh specific uh initiatives.

How how large is the region that you cover?

It's it's southern New Hampshire, so I'm assuming it's what Concord South or uh it's 14 municipalities.

So you guys are uh one of our our northernmost town.

We go all the way down to Wyndham, we go as far east as uh uh Candia Deerfield Chester, and then west we're all the way out to Francis Town.

How far north?

Hooksit.

Yeah, you guys are yeah.

Yeah.

So we had kind of talked about Hooksit is kind of a pass-through town for a lot of towns that are north of us.

Um and it it's created a lot of traffic problems in town.

Some of that's gonna get worked at worked out to some extent.

But we still have what what we believe to be a problem where there's a lot of towns, there's a large gap between Hooksit and Concord where there's no exits, and and that creates a lot of burden on the roadways in in our town because we have people that are trying to go to Pembroke and Suncook and in other parts of Concord uh that you're using Route 3 and 3A for those paths.

Um and uh, you know, like like uh we had brought up before, we tried passing a TIP here, and one of the major boundaries we found aside from educating people about what it is, was the traffic concerns.

So it's becoming a problem here in terms of us being able to to get some of the initiatives that we feel like we need to get passed in our town to help expand our tax base and drive investment.

Um does your group work with uh I assume a central New Hampshire planning group as well.

Uh, there is there's is there back and forth between the different regions that could address those types of issues?

Yeah, this so there's collaboration amongst them and uh the planning commission when it comes to transportation related projects, um we'll often have the Central Regional Planning Commission come to our meetings.

And the reason it works that way where they're coming to us is because we're something we're designated as a metropolitan planning organization, so we get transportation planning funds designated directly to the planning commission, whereas Central does not.

Um it's a little in the weeds for what you're asking, but in in general, uh there's a couple things that we do that allow us to track the volume of traffic.

Uh we do traffic counseling annual basis.

Uh we you know, we have uh an exhaustive analysis of that o over time.

Um we have a couple of different public documents that track congestion and travel delay.

Uh we have something called a congestion management process.

It's a document that we update, you know, every three to five years.

Um I interrupt you one quick one second.

Greg, I'm assuming a lot of this stuff that he's referring to is probably what just done uh because of the project in relation to the rotaries and stuff, right?

Do they do the studies?

The uh yeah, there's an engineering report on those roundabouts, but the congestion mitigation plan that James is referring to, I had mentioned it um a couple meetings ago in reference to Route 3A being put on that plan um where it wasn't in in 2020 when they last did the update.

Um but yes, there's um it's been several hearings for the roundabout projects, a lot of back and forth that predates my time here.

Um but we we do have um like very detailed engineering reports on that.

I think it's through preliminary engineering and um at this point they're getting into some more detailed plans.

So does it make sense to kind of to share some of what we already have, or does it or do you think that there's a need for more study?

So I I think regarding that specific project, the the studies have been have been done and and the projects moving forward.

Something that um I had spoke with with James about briefly is um basically how to get in DOT's ear, how to how to most successfully uh pitch to New Hampshire DOT that Hooksit does take on the burden of a lot of off the interstate traffic on on DOT's roads.

Um and a point that James made to me that I didn't really fully realize before I spoke to him is you know, everyone at Hooksit says, yeah, we we need the roads to be widened um on Route 3, we need the roundabouts on on Route 3A, but specific to r uh road widening and that never happening and it being so far in the future.

My fear is approaching businesses without I think a detailed infrastructure project, which is what everyone's most traditionally aware of.

Um they'll say what well what's in it for us, and the answer I don't know how we we we would best phrase this.

It would be, well, what's in it for us is we're trying to work on the traffic here and do what we can before DOT can actually widen this road.

And I think um James has some points that might be interesting to share about how road widening might not solve the traffic issues in itself.

Um but I'm not at the rotaries, and I know that our engineer isn't with us anymore, but the roads are the are they I can't remember, are they two lanes or one?

So they're they're two.

Yeah, they they would have like a slip bypass lane.

Yeah, one slip lane to go directly north or directly south on either side, and then it's a three-way um and I believe they're two late there's two lanes, like the the slip lane would would be the beginning of one, and then it turns into one lane when you're going around it after the slip lane, you've gone past it.

So I I think it's I think there's two ways to approach the problem.

Um one way is obviously widening what we have here, right?

Which we've talked about, we're working on the rotaries.

I think another thing on a grander scam and on a long-term plan is to get with the state to try to talk about putting another exit somewhere.

And that's a federal thing.

There, I mean, there's a river there that you know, I'm sure they would have to cross.

It's it's gonna take a lot of planning, but I think there's a need for it.

And you see a lot of you know, a lot of towns that are in between that you know, those residents really have to drive a really long way.

And that creates problems for fire safety and all kinds of things.

So I I do think there's a case to be made there.

I think that hooks it really we're kind of carrying the brunt of the problem, and I think you know it's appropriate that we start the conversation about fixing that problem.

Yeah, I uh the planning commission can play a role in in bridging communication with DOT about these kind of things.

I I think uh being able to articulate uh the problem with with clear boundaries about what what the issue is, how it's affecting the town, enumerate enumerate those things and putting forth a vision uh would be useful.

So uh I I would say that um in terms of New Hampshire DOT, they're they're limited by the allocation of federal funds that they have available.

Right.