This town’s cookie-cutter downtown is choked by a rush hour traffic nightmare
Sleepy little Georgetown sits at a geographic crossroads that turns the light at the center of town into a maddening backup.
GEORGETOWN — As far as small towns go, Georgetown’s downtown is about as cookie cutter as it gets. A bank. A couple pizza places and barber shops. A gas station. A nail salon and two yoga studios. There’s even a little hobby shop that’s been there for decades.
And at its center is a traffic light, where East and West Main streets meet and are intersected by Central Street and North Street. Swing through this Merrimack Valley town at lunchtime and it will feel like that quiet little Main Street you find anywhere in New England.
Just don’t try to get there at rush hour.
That’s because those streets are also state routes, 97 and 133, that serve as major cut-throughs, and the line to get through that traffic light can easily stretch for 20 minutes.
“It’s comically bad. I’ll sit on my porch and just watch the traffic,” said John Maglio, 52, who lives a mile from that traffic light, just off Route 133, which serves as a shortcut between I-95 and I-495 for drivers who don’t want to go all the way north to the interchange in Salisbury. “My kids will call me and want me to pick them up in town, and I’m just like ‘Walk!’”
It’s been this way for as long as anyone can remember but only seems to be getting worse, locals say.
“It used to be that Thursday and Friday were really bad, but now it feels like it’s every day, and the constant beeping makes it sound like we’re in a major city,” said Amanda Ross, who owns Georgetown Barbershop, which is just steps from the traffic light. “We now have a policy for afternoon appointments where we give everyone 10 minutes to be late before we call to see if they’re coming, because we know they’re stuck in traffic.”
Many of her clients have taken to parking far away and walking, to avoid driving in and out of town, she said. But she, like everyone interviewed for this story, was not pointing fingers at the town to do something about it.
“I don’t think there’s anything that can be done,” she said. “There are houses all along the road so you can’t widen it. You just have to avoid it at all costs.”
“The only solution is to put in a tunnel,” interjected Doug Gordon, who was sitting in Ross’s barber chair getting a trim.
Orlando Pacheco, the town administrator, said most people in the town of 8,500 have come to accept the traffic rather than accept major alterations to the town, and the slow pace keeps the town pedestrian-friendly.
“We want to drive fast when we’re behind the wheel, but when we’re not, we want people to drive slower, so it’s a tradeoff,” Pacheco said. “But if anyone has a magic design plan, we’re certainly happy to listen.”
The town, which was settled in 1639, sits at an accident of modern geography. An exit off I-95 about 1.8 miles from downtown is used by people trying to get to and from Groveland and Haverhill to the northwest, or West Boxford to the southwest. For those trying to cut from I-95 to I-495, it can shave 15 miles off driving all the way to the interchange further north.
And so, each morning and afternoon, starting when the schools let out, the line at the light forms. Some afternoons, it can stretch all the way back to I-95, and even onto it, as drivers inch for nearly miles to the traffic light, which, according to a highly unscientific survey by a Globe reporter, lets 20 to 25 cars through each light cycle.
And so the locals avoid it. Or they just walk, playing a popular game where you pick out a car in traffic and see if you’ll beat them to the light. Or, in the case of Ken Collins, a 33-year-old who grew up in town, they find a modern solution to a modern problem.
“This is the only way to avoid this mess,” he said as he exited Georgetown Liquors on a recent afternoon and slung a leg over an e-bike. “I can blast right past all the cars.”
Or they find the silver lining, like Scott Paganelli, who co-owns Pratt Hobby Shop, which has been in business for 50 years and sells “hobby-grade” remote-controlled cars and boats that cost hundreds of dollars.
“I’m grateful for the heavy traffic,” he said, “because every week I’ll have several people come in and say, ‘I’ve been driving by here for years, but I finally decided to stop because I couldn’t handle sitting in my car.’”
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