By Scott Taylor,Staff Writer

LEWISTON – Taking away one lane of outer Lisbon Street just isn’t realistic, according to Danny Fitzsimmons, who lives there.

It won’t make the stretch of Route 196 north of the Lisbon town line safer and it won’t slow down traffic, he said.

“I see people go by there at 60 to 70 miles per hour now,” said Fitzsimmons, of 2161 Lisbon Road. Those cars would just use a new left-turn lane to pass slower cars, he said. That’s going to lead to head-on collisions on a stretch well known for rear-end collisions.

“You can walk away from a rear-ender. But you’re not going to walk away from a head-on,” he said.

Fitzsimmons was one of a handful of people who showed up at the Ramada Inn on Wednesday night to talk about re-striping Lisbon Street, changing the road from having two lanes in both directions to one lane in each direction with a turn lane in the middle.

Another handful took the other side.

Colleen Lahey, office operations manager at Liberty Mutual’s 1775 Lisbon Road complex, said she has more than 400 employees who take their lives in their hands turning from Lisbon Street.

“I’d love to see the speed limit go down, and I’d love to see a traffic light there,” Lahey said. “But if we can’t get those, I’ll take three lanes.”

Sooner is better, she said.

“We don’t want to wait until there’s a death there,” Lahey said.

Developer Nino Naous hopes to build a convenience store at 1930 Lisbon Road, and the state has made a three-lane road one of the requirements. Naous would have to pay to re-stripe the stretch between the Lisbon line and South Lisbon Road, replacing the four lanes with three – one lane in each direction and a turning lane in the middle – to meet state requirements.

His plan is scheduled to go to the Planning Board on Monday. It goes to the City Council on Tuesday if the Planning Board approves.

City councilors could decide to make him re-stripe more, all the way to Westminster Street, said engineer Mike Gotto of Technical Services Inc.

It’s the only way that land along that part of Lisbon Street will get developed in the next few years, Gotto said. The state will not allow any businesses to expand as long as they rate the road a danger.

“If any business wants to expand there, they’re going to face the same requirement,” Gotto said. Letting Naous re-stripe the street now will open outer Lisbon Street to development in the future.

The 30 people at the meeting were split over the plan to create three lanes, but they all agreed that Lisbon Street needs five lanes. But five lanes would involve tearing up the road up and making it wider, an expensive proposition. The state would have to agree to pay for that, according to City Councilor Renee Bernier, and it would take years to get approval.