MANCHESTER, N.H. – A proposed ordinance change that would prohibit pedestrians from using traffic medians met pushback from the city solicitor’s office during the Tuesday, Oct. 21 Board of Mayor and Aldermen Committee on Public Safety, Health and Traffic.
According to language in the proposed ordinance, its purpose was to promote the safety of pedestrians and motorists by not allowing individuals to occupy traffic medians unless they were designed for pedestrian use. In the proposal, such medians would feature marked crosswalks, signals or other aspects that would imply safe roadway crossing for pedestrians.
Katie Broderick, an attorney working within the City Solicitor’s office, told the board that there was no immediate quantitative safety data available necessitating the overturning of an injunction against the city set in the 2017 court case Petrello v. Manchester, NH. The Petrello case is best known as the ruling that overturned the city’s anti-panhandling laws after they were found to impinge on First Amendment rights.
Manchester City Solicitor Emily Rice said that her office would be happy to look at constitution communications received by Ward 6 Alderman Crissy Kantor, where Kantor said that a resident trying to help a person in a median was exposed to danger. However, Rice there was an extensive discovery process during Petrello and the likelihood of relitigating that case would not be in the city’s best interest unless there was new data that could conceivably provide a different outcome.
“We’re not saying that there is not an issue,” said Rice. “We’re saying that if we were to pass an ordinance without an established factual predicate, it would provide the same result, which we feel is would be a waste of resources.”
Rice added that other current laws on the books that prevent standing in roadways and obstructing traffic could be used by police to respond when there are situations in road medians that do jeopardize public safety.
Manchester Police Department Chief Peter Marr told the committee that he has advised his officers to ignore individuals on public road medians unless it appears that they could be endangering the safety of themselves or others.
He added that the phenomenon of people sitting or standing on medians is largely limited to the intersections of Salmon and Elm Streets, the area near Granite and Canal Streets or intersections along South Willow Street.
The committee recommended that the proposal be received and filed, effectively killing it in its current form. However, it was indicated that the proposal could reappear before the committee after safety data was provided by the Manchester Department of Public Works.