PORTSMOUTH The City Council is slated to vote Monday on a motion to change a portion of the Middle Street bike lane by returning parked cars to the curb instead of closer to passing traffic where they are now.
City Councilors Esther Kennedy and Petra Huda want to change about 1,600 feet of the protected portion of the bike lane from the intersection of Middle and Highland streets to the intersection of Middle and Lincoln Avenue.
They also want to designate Lincoln Avenue as a “Safe Route to Schools bike route.”
If the motion passes, Huda said recently, the bike lane – which runs along Middle Street from Portsmouth High School to downtown – will still exist but will “look like every other bike lane in the city.”
Portsmouth Herald
Jan. 6 To the Editor:
Although they disagreed with each other, writers Cheri Bach and Mark Brighton both made some valid points about the students who pressured the Portsmouth City Council to change its stance on postponing the plastics and Styrofoam bans, even though this action could have adverse legal and financial consequences.
Ms. Bach correctly praised the students idealism and organizational skills. Mr. Brighton rightly noted that their actions did raise some larger concerns, such as the substitution of indoctrination for critical thinking in our schools.
This incident also highlighted the influence of non-taxpayers on Portsmouth s policy-making, although the consequences of these decisions will be felt more acutely by tax-paying Portsmouth residents and business owners. The students themselves are probably too young to be taxpayers. I noticed that the most outspoken student-activists who were quoted were from Rye and Greenland, so their pa