PERU — Questions around the entrances and how traffic flow would operate onsite were raised at a Traffic Control Permit Scoping meeting on May 30 regarding a planned large convenience store at 9 North Main St.

Tim Soucie, Project Engineer for Maine Department of Transportation, Region 3, said June 4 that there was some discussion on the entrance closest to the intersection of Rt. 108 with Main and North Main, concern that that would impact the intersection itself, and the closest driveway.

If all goes as planned, groundbreaking for a larger Community Quik Stop business will take place this fall. The proposed 43×90-foot building (3,870 sq. feet) will have underground tanks for gas and diesel, along with 17 parking spaces, with two entrances off Route 108. This will replace the much smaller Community Quik Stop at the site, owned by Community Energy of Rumford.

Soucie said most of the conversation at this meeting involved around the entrances and how traffic flow would operate onsite.

“I think the feeling was that one of the conditions of the permit was to monitor, to see how that entrance functions.

If it functions fine, with no issues and no impacts to the nearby intersection, then we would have no further concerns with it. But any reports from the monitoring that was causing issues, then we would potentially make it a right in, right out. The main concern being lefts in and out of that. Right now, it’s a right out only. Right now, it’s hard to know how it will function,” he said.

“The difficulty at that intersection mostly is the speed coming down the hill and the difficulty of turning left off of North Main — speed and sight distance. One of the concerns was that we don’t allow lefts at that entrance that might encourage more lefts at the intersection itself, which is even closer to that hill. As a whole, the gas station project is actually going to take away traffic from the intersection,” he said.

Soucie said this proposed project will be an improvement to that area. “I think that’s kind of a general feeling. Really, the only concern is that it can be a dicey intersection at times, depending on the time of day. We’re just making sure that it doesn’t negatively impact…if there’s no obvious impacts, we’ll do the best we can to monitor the closest entrance for awhile.”

He said nothing else was raised at the meeting as a concern. “Hopefully, it will be a big improvement. I think it will be.”

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