This story was published as part of a collaboration between Andover News Service and the Department of Journalism in Boston University’s College of Communication. The student journalist is a member of Professor Meghan E. Irons’s Reporting in Depth class.
By Sebastian Castro
Officials have not yet picked a safety-improvement plan for Elm Square as the new year dawns, but expect to begin work on improving the town’s most accident-prone crossroads during 2025.
Eric Olson and his wife Mary Beth Ellis sat attentively in Memorial Hall Library at the last public meeting, in October, while local administrators presented potential safety improvements to the intersection at Elm Square where the Olsons’ 5-year-old daughter, Sidney, was struck and killed by a truck in May 2023. It was the third public meeting concerning the intersection, which has been the site of dozens of accidents and near misses in recent years, according to public records. Town officials hope a redesign of the site will lead to fewer collisions and improved road safety in Andover.
“We have to fix what’s broken at an intersection, but ultimately, it’s a much broader systemic problem,” Eric Olson said in an interview after the Oct. 9 meeting. “We’ve been conditioned to think road violence is normal.”
Roughly a dozen people attended that last two-hour meeting at the library. Officials presented six initial geometric designs and three traffic-control alternatives for the intersection. Potential changes include eliminating some lanes, removing excess pavement and adding a crosswalk.
The Elm Street intersection with Main, North Main, and Central Street has been the most dangerous of Andover’s four major intersections, accounting for 62.5% of crashes from 2016 to 2022, according to a recent road safety audit created for the town and state department of transportation.
The audit documented 56 crashes at the Elm Street intersection during that period. On Elm Street, nearby, 78-year-old Andover resident Francine Fuller was struck and killed in April 2022.
Sidney Olson, 5, was killed while using the crosswalk at Main and Elm streets. After her death, Andover residents mobilized to address road safety in town. Town officials implemented immediate changes, including increasing pedestrian walk sign times. They also added a “No Turn on Red” sign and exclusive pedestrian phasing, where all lights are red when people are in the crosswalk.
The Massachusetts Department of Transportation approved the changes in the weeks following Sydney Olson’s death, and officials later secured funding to perform the road safety audit, a 186-page document detailing 88 potential safety enhancements, each with attached safety payoffs, time frames, and cost estimates.
Olson has been advocating for road safety since his daughter’s death. He said he’s been impressed that Andrew Flanagan, the town manager, and Michael Lindstrom, deputy town manager, have focused on road safety.
“From day one, there were efforts to make changes,” Olson said. Andover’s town engineer, Arthur Martineau, acknowledged complications with an intersection like Elm Square that has “competing needs” but said he remained optimistic about a balanced solution.
“I think that a sensitivity has been applied, and that has translated to an attentiveness to this issue that I think stands out considering all of our other attention to other projects,” Martineau said in an interview. Carlos Jaquez, deputy director of public works, said Elm Square is a “typical New England skewed intersection.”
Cars enter and exit the intersection and surrounding area from multiple directions, with Post Office Avenue, Essex Street and High Street just feet away from Elm Square itself.
“You’re starting with a less than-ideal situation,” Juarez said.
Elm Square is part of downtown Andover and is surrounded by several businesses, a small veterans park, and the regional library. It is also within easy walking distance from many homes and Doherty Middle School.
“One of the biggest dangers we have is large trucks mixing with small children,” Olson said. “I would love for downtown businesses to take interest in this and make adjustments to how they receive deliveries.”
Any truck exclusions would have to be approved by the state, which has strict guidelines for what qualifies for a truck exclusion, so there are no plans yet to ban trucks, Jaquez said.
In 2023, Andover adopted a plan to make the speed limit on most roadways in town 25 miles per hour. Signs supporting the movement popped up on many lawns.
Olson said he will continue to push for “simple, sensible changes” in Elm Square such as curved mirrors that provide drivers with a wider field of view. It’s something, he said, that could have saved his daughter’s life and prevented other nonfatal collisions.
“My daughter’s not the first to be killed, and certainly not the first to be injured or scared,” said Olson. “You get the stats, the people that died, but what you don’t hear is all the near misses.”
Olson was struck by a truck while riding his bike in September. He said a “mindset shift” needs to happen so people think about road safety as an investment in public health.
“It’s not about pedestrians versus cars,’’ he added. “It’s an investment for all of us, whether you prefer driving, or you prefer walking.”