Lynn residents: No more trucks

LYNN – Tuesday?s snowstorm did not deter at least some Forest Street residents from attending a public hearing to tell the Traffic Commission of their plight with the trucking in their neighborhood.Matt McCormick got straight to the point, placing a rusty pipe on the conference table in the Police Station?s Community Room. “I found this in my yard a few days ago,” he told Chief Kevin Coppinger and the other members of the commission. “It came off one of the trucks.”Due to the weather, McCormick, Mary Marcangelo and Joseph Wilson were the only neighbors who showed up to the public hearing, which, according to Coppinger, was continued from a November meeting in which about 40 neighbors attended to support prohibiting trucking on Forest and Franklin streets.Coppinger said Marcangelo?s complaints of noise, dust, property damage, lowered property values and their bathroom shaking every time a truck rumbles by were reflective of the first large group?s complaints, as was the request to reroute the trucks.?We are a throughway and we?re not supposed to be,” said McCormick.Coppinger explained that the trucks are mostly driven by independent contractors who are traveling from the Swampscott quarry to dump materials in Malden, and with no restrictions in Lynn on where trucks can go (except for two streets), they are doing nothing wrong by driving back and forth.Coppinger said after November?s meeting he and Department of Public Works Interim Director J.T. Gaucher contacted contractor Aggregate Industries, who he said “are more than willing to work with us” to find routes that will take some of the burden off of Forest Street. Coppinger said as far as restricting trucks from certain streets in Lynn, it would be an issue to take up with the Massachusetts Highway Department.Coppinger said he and Gaucher would meet with Aggregate again in January prepared with traffic data provided by the Beta Group.The commission took an official vote to table prohibiting trucking from Forest Street until after that meeting.