The spot where last week’s serious crash occurred in Woolwich, at Route One and Montsweag Road, always looks like an accident in-waiting, on a number of fronts. In some of the same respects, the Route One-Nequasset Road intersection, also in Woolwich, used to also be hairy, particularly if trying to cross Route One. 

 

For much of the day, there is just a lot of traffic on Route One, and I would rather “go with the flow” of traffic and eventually turn around, than to wait for long enough openings on both sides of the road and to hope I am correctly estimating the speed of distant cars. 

 

The traffic lights at Route One-Nequasset completely changed that experience.

 

With the layout differences between that spot and Route One-Montsweag, I don’t know what the answer is there, because I didn’t finish (or start) traffic engineering school. But someone did, and maybe they can figure it out.

 

None of this is to speculate on what may have caused the July 19 crash, still under investigation. It just seems like if a miracle of traffic management happened in one spot, as it has, maybe another miracle of traffic management could improve another longstanding tough spot up the road. 

 

Week’s positive parting thought: Thank you to the area public safety crews who respond to accidents big and small year round, including all these busy summer weeks, swiftly helping those involved in the crashes and working to get lanes reopened.