A high school student and a fourth-grader have to cross Kenduskeag Avenue daily to get to and from their bus stop at the intersection where their neighbor was hit and killed by the driver of an SUV a week ago.
Their mother, Ahnastasia Lalicata, was already concerned about them having to cross a busy street, but now she’s even more worried.
Jeffrey Green, 69, was hit and killed by a driver Feb. 15 near the intersection of Kenduskeag Avenue and Glenwood Drive. The driver of the SUV that hit Green told police the man suddenly appeared in front of the vehicle. Green was chasing after a dog, the driver told police.
Police are still investigating and there is no additional information available at this time, Bangor police Sgt. Jason McAmbley said.
Green was a wonderful neighbor, Lalicata said. He was always encouraging her as she worked on her gardening and would share his extra mulch.
“He was such a nice man,” Lalicata said.
Green’s death highlights the dangers of Kenduskeag Avenue to people who live along it. The speed limit on the stretch of road between Husson Avenue and Griffin Road is 30 mph, but drivers regularly speed down the relatively straight stretch.
Residents have raised concerns with the city, including to police, about dangerous drivers along Kenduskeag Avenue for more than a decade. Speed humps, additional speeding tickets and traffic calming solutions were discussed during a city of Bangor Government Committee meeting in September 2013. After a study, the city found in December 2013 speed humps were not appropriate with the 25 mph speed limit.
Temporary speed humps were tested during summer 2024 on Kenduskeag Avenue in the Little City neighborhood, including one near the intersection with Montgomery Street. Those will likely be made permanent this summer, Bangor’s Director of Engineering Jeff Davis said.
On Kenduskeag between Glenwood Drive and Griffin Road, the speed limit is 30 mph and there is about a three-foot shoulder on one side of the road, with almost no shoulder on the other. Drivers seem to straddle the white line and regularly fail to move over for runners or people collecting their mail, Kenduskeag Avenue resident Bob Ziegelaar said.
“We never walk the length of it because it’s just lethal,” Ziegelaar said, who served as the director of the Bangor International Airport from 1991 to 2001.
In the last 10 years, there have been 48 crashes from the intersection with Husson Avenue to just before Griffin Road. Of those, 17 have resulted in injury or death, according to traffic data from the Maine Department of Transportation. Those numbers include the intersection with Valley Avenue, but do not include the Griffin Road intersection.
Lalicata won’t walk her dog along Kenduskeag Avenue because it doesn’t feel safe as drivers fly by. A sidewalk would make things at least feel safer, she said.
“There are pedestrians all the time and it’s not safe,” Lalicata said.
In the nearly five years she’s lived in her house, she’s seen four crashes within about 100 yards of Glenwood Drive.
One driver was rear-ended while waiting to make a left turn. The force of the crash sent his car flying off the road, into a hedge roughly 15 feet from the front of Lalicata’s house. She was still finding pieces of the car for months after the crash, and the hedge hasn’t recovered, she said.
The city of Bangor’s Engineering Department hasn’t heard from residents about the road issues, Davis said. Ziegelaar said he’s requested traffic enforcement from Bangor police. Police have received requests for that stretch of Kenduskeag, as with many other roads in the city, McAmbley said.
“We’re constantly looking at hundreds and hundreds of roads,” Davis said. “If residents call, those get put to the top of the list or if we see continuous issues on that road, we also would look at that.”
There haven’t been discussions about speeding issues along the stretch of Kenduskeag where Green was hit, Davis said. The department will likely do a traffic study to get a sense of vehicles and speed before the bridge over I-95 closes for replacement.
The Kenduskeag Avenue bridge over I-95 will be replaced in the coming months, Maine Department of Transportation spokesperson Paul Merrill said. The bids for the project are due in May and the timeline will be finalized after that.
The bridge will be completely closed and detours will be set up, Davis said. Those paths aren’t finalized but they may include Valley Avenue, which would then likely require traffic control, such as additional stop signs so people don’t have to crane their necks.