By Jody Record, Media Relations

The new two-lane street that will allow pedestrians, vehicles and bicycles to safely share the road on the south side of campus has moved past the halfway mark toward its completion.

When that finally happens—it’s targeted for February but likely will be finished in December-- Colovos Road by Gregg Hall will connect to McDaniel Drive in front of Kingsbury Hall and the undergraduate residence halls being built next to Forest Park. This will greatly improve the accessibility to Gregg Hall, Chase Ocean Engineering Lab, and the College Woods for faculty and students in southern portion of campus. There are engineering faculty and students who go back and forth several times a day between the buildings on the two sides of the railroad tracks.

“Right now, the only connection across the railroad tracks is the Colovos Road underpass,” says Larry Van Dessel, executive director of design and construction for UNH Facilities. “It’s only one lane wide, and cars aren’t supposed to go through when there are pedestrians so it’s not the safest situation.”

All that will change with the new road; it’s going to be two-vehicles, two-bicycles and two-sidewalk-widths wide. The steel bridge will have overhead lighting as well as fixtures on its concrete abutments. At some point, the Colovos Road underpass, with the railroad tracks above, will become a pedestrian walkway.

The new roadway is the first step in a street network plan to reduce congestion on Main Street. It also will help with the flow of anticipated increased traffic in the west end area.

“The southern underpass is one element of a much greater vision to create a campus traffic pattern that respects the core campus for pedestrians,” Van Dessel says.

That concept appears in the 2004 Campus Master Plan where there is discussion to extend McDaniel Drive under the railroad tracks, behind the football fields and connect to Main Street by the tennis courts. This will significantly reduce traffic on Main Street east of the railroad tracks, making the center of campus more pedestrian friendly.

“With the extension of McDaniel Drive, if you want to go to the west side of campus, you wouldn’t have to go down Main Street,” Van Dessel says.

Building the southern underpass meant constructing a bed to support the railroad track so train service wouldn’t be interrupted. To do that, H-beams were driven 35 feet down into the ground and boards were attached to form a support wall when the dirt was dug away under the existing track.

The barrier system between the old and new track allowed workers to create a temporary track for train passage. A milestone for the project was reached recently when the tracks were moved back and trains started traveling over the new underpass structure.

“With the new underpass and new road, a loop road becomes so much more feasible,” says Doug Bencks, UNH architect and director of campus planning. “That would take so much traffic off Main Street and help make UNH a walking campus.”