Lincoln Street, opposite the high school entrance, was converted to a one-way street for a trial period recently. However, while town officials commended the pilot, the testing is far from over.

After Andover residents voiced concerns for the safety of kids walking or biking to school, one lane of Lincoln Street was closed off for a month to see how it would affect traffic and safety. Between August 19 and September 22, people could travel along Lincoln Street only toward the high school. Many town officials believe it improved the safety of the street.

“Anytime you can provide a safe passage for anyone to walk, I think it makes it safer,” said Paul Materazzo, Andover’s Director of Planning and Land Use. “We want to provide safe passage, so kids feel like they can walk to school, right? I mean, it seems ridiculous to me [that you might] live that close, but your parents don’t feel comfortable when you walk to school because the infrastructure is bad.”

Materazzo suggested a permanent solution he believes would make kids much safer. He said a good fix would be a shared use path with a curb on Lincoln Street, which would be one-way due to lack of space for two safe lanes.

According to Safety Officer Glen Ota, a shared use path is “a minimum of 8 feet wide, [accommodating] bicycles and pedestrians at the same time.” Materazzo explained, “It’s essentially… a wider sidewalk along the entire length of [Lincoln Street] that allows people to feel comfortable walking or biking.”

Although this may seem much safer, not everyone is happy with the change.

“I absolutely hate [Lincoln street being one-way],” said Mo Gearin, a freshman who has been walking to school on Lincoln St for years. “I believe that it is way more dangerous, and often cars and trucks are taking one-ways for granted and not acting road-safe. If anything, if we make it one-way, we should be going in the other direction. In mornings, cars are cutting into traffic during dropoff, and they’re being way more dangerous than they should be.”

Kaila Bloom, a senior at AHS who also walks to school on Lincoln Street, was neutral about the change. However, both students cited speed as a major issue on the road.

“I don’t think it’s a matter of the cars going by each other, I think the bigger issue is speed. Like, you see some cars just flying through,” Bloom said. Gearin thinks the change to one-way affected the street more. He clarified, “Cars often will ignore speed limits on one-way streets because there are going to be no cars coming in the other direction.”

According to Ota, the data shows something different. He said there were two studies on the speed of cars on Lincoln Street, one when it was two-way and the other when it was one-way. There was little difference in the speed of the cars and, apart from a few outliers, everyone followed the speed limit. However, he presented a possible explanation for Gearin’s concerns.

“When you’re walking down a road,” he said, “and a car’s going by you at 25 mph, it may feel like they’re going 50. Just because… perception of speed is off.”

Even without pushback from residents, there is still a lot of testing to be done before any decisions can be made. According to Materazzo, some projects like this take years to be made permanent.

In the meantime, Thomas Paolera, AHS’s School Resource Officer, urges drivers to do what they can to make Andover a safer town to live in. Specifically, he strongly advises students against distracted driving. 

“Put the phone on do not disturb, or put it away, whatever works best for you,” Paolera advised. “It’s Massachusetts’ ‘hands free’ [law] now, and the phone is incredibly distracting…  please do not use your phone at all while you are driving.”