Rockport residents could be forgiven for hardly ever giving Cross Street a thought.

Maybe you’ve used the street to go to and from the schools on Route 90 or maybe you are among the many congregants who attend the Anchor Church or have found the street to be a handy way to get to the Erickson Fields Preserve. 

But for most of you, the street isn’t something you think about or use, and for those of us who live here, that’s just fine. We’ve got young families on the street and a number of dog walkers, and while traffic on the street can get quite dicey, especially in the 10 minutes or so before the morning bell at the high school, it is a nice street on which to live.

But not for much longer.

A nightmare of traffic is headed for Cross Street, which will almost certainly render it unwalkable for even the bravest souls and far less safe for all who live here. But complications are coming even for those of you who don’t make Cross Street your home.

The issue before us is the confluence of three developments descending on our street all at once.

The first, and by far the most troubling, is a massive new apartment complex proposed for part of the lot on which the Anchor Church now sits. This proposal has to be seen to be believed. Two huge buildings are to be built on the site, each one containing a dozen apartments. This single outsized project alone—neighbors have christened the two proposed buildings “the monstrosities”—will more than double the number of households on Cross Street.

But there’s more.

An entirely separate development is being planned for the lot just across the street. Two new structures are planned there as well (though far more reasonably scaled ones, thankfully), which, when combined with renovations to the site’s existing farmhouse (which are already underway), will result in nine additional housing units on that site.

In sum, a street with fewer than 20 homes on it now will add, in short order, dozens of new residents (as well as countless added vehicles) all located within several hundred feet of each other and each trying to enter or exit Cross Street multiple times a day.

On top of all this comes the news that Children’s House Montessori School intends to move into the building that currently houses Anchor Church, which means dozens of additional families will be traveling through these intersections and in and out of these same driveways each day. 

The sketch below shows both proposed developments. The only two structures on this map that exist today are the building currently occupied by the Anchor Church and the farmhouse on the corner of Cross Street and Rt. 90. Everything else you see here is still to come.

Image courtesy Steve Bowen

 Anyone familiar with this intersection will understand instantly the traffic nightmare that is on the way. The high speeds along that stretch of Route 90 already make this intersection tricky to navigate, doubling or tripling the number of people using this intersection on a daily basis, as these combined developments are sure to do, will make it considerably worse.

Vehicles racing down Rt. 90 toward Route 1, for example — the speed limit on Route 90 at Cross Street is 45 mph — will come upon stopped vehicles waiting to turn left onto Cross Street, which will, in turn, be waiting for vehicles to navigate both that intersection and the entrances and exits to these new developments.

Some have expressed hope that the long-proposed multi-use trail along Route 90, if it is ever constructed, will help alleviate some of this. But a key element of that plan is the installation of a crosswalk at this same intersection, which adds pedestrians into the calculation and complicates traffic further still.

What is critical to understand is that there is no plan for any of this.

None of the developers, for example, has any responsibility here. They are required to provide an approvable plan for their own development, but how that development then interacts with the others around it is not their concern. The developers of the twin apartment buildings, for example, heard about these traffic worries at a recent Planning Board meeting. They listened politely and said little. They were not required to respond or to suggest solutions, and so they didn't. 

Rockport’s Planning Board can take no action either. Despite their thoughtful consideration of these issues at their recent meeting, there is little they can do. They are, as one member noted with frustration, a planning board that “doesn’t actually produce any plans.”

As for the state, and whether they might have some role in helping to both anticipate and mitigate the traffic nightmare to come, the Town’s planning director told the Board that the state only bestirs itself to tackle traffic issues of this kind “when there are deaths.”

Very reassuring.

Whether that tragic day comes or not, something will have to be done about the traffic if these developers choose to go forward with their plans — a traffic light, stepped up enforcement, speed bumps — something. One need only look at the Meadow Street intersection, where, several years ago, a traffic light was installed after a serious accident there. Ironically enough, the installation of that light drove more traffic to Cross Street, which was soon discovered to be a quick cut-through to the schools that avoided the light altogether.

Traffic mitigation on main roads only drives more traffic to the back roads where so many of us live. That is what is coming.

In the near term, though, the nightmare to come will be one for Cross Street residents to endure on their own. A more dangerous street, endless streams of high-speed traffic, a diminished quality of life. 

But that nightmare is coming to a neighborhood near you, too, one day. As long as we have inadequate systems to manage complex overlapping developments of this kind, and as long as the developers involved need not be troubled by their individual contribution to the resulting mess, the nightmare on Cross Street will not be the last one the community will face.

Steve Bowen lives in Rockport