Legal maneuvers in moped commute
- |
Bob Lavoie wants to do the right thing. Five months ago, the 72-year-old Nashuan decided to leave his gas-guzzling 1987 Oldsmobile Cutlass in the driveway.
He now drives a silver moped across the Merrimack River every day to his job at the Market Basket supermarket in Hudson, N.H.
"I did it to save money," said Lavoie, who estimates he gets about 90 miles per gallon on the vehicle.
But the transition has not been without problems.
"I can only go so fast, " said Lavoie of the moped, which has a maximum speed of 30 miles per hour. "Most people are nice, but some drivers get upset, especially in traffic," he said.
In the mornings Lavoie drives over Memorial Bridge to Hudson. "That's when I run into trouble, when traffic backs up at the lights. It's a two-lane road and the speed limit is only 30 miles per hour, but everybody is in a hurry to get to work."
Lavoie, who wears a red Budweiser windbreaker so he can easily be seen by motorists, said he would prefer to take a southern route home from work, and pass over the Sagamore Bridge, which also passes over the Merrimack River and connects Route 3A in Hudson to the Daniel Webster Highway and Route 3 in Nashua, but that route is problematic.
A sign at the Hudson entrance to the bridge prohibits mopeds. A moped by definition is any two- or three-wheeled vehicle with an engine displacement of 50cc or less.
"I can understand why mopeds aren't allowed on Route 3," he said. "The cars go way too fast. But I only want to get off at the exit to the Daniel Webster Highway. That's before Route 3.
"I don't want to break the law, he said. "Couldn't they just move the sign to the other side of the exit?"
Bill Boynton, New Hampshire Department of Transportation spokesman, said moving the sign beyond the exit for the Daniel Webster Highway is difficult because state law requires that the sign be placed at the entrance to the highway and, though the bridge and the exit for Daniel Webster Highway are between the sign and Route 3, technically the entrance to the highway is at Route 3A, the entrance to the bridge.
But Boynton did say, "We have no problem with someone driving in a moped over the bridge as along as they get off before Route 3."
Four months after a ceremony marking the beginning of the project to replace the Waterous Covered Bridge that crosses the Nashua River on Groton Street, the wooden structure has been demolished and replaced by a temporary aluminum pedestrian bridge that also carries utilities over the river.
The bridge replacement project was jeopardized in June when an endangered species of mussels was found in the river, but Highway Department spokesman Adam Hurtubise said the mussels have been relocated "out of the work area."
Hurtubise said the old bridge has been demolished and a new steel-and-concrete approach to the span is expected to be constructed by the spring of 2009. A new wooden bridge is being prefabricated and is scheduled to be installed in late summer of 2009.
Transportation comments and questions may be sent to starts@globe.com. 
