BANGOR – The third of four recent public meetings hosted by the city’s planning board drew little fanfare Tuesday night, but residents of Bangor’s west side rural area said their fears mirror those of other city residents.

“The traffic on Ohio Street is a problem, I’m amazed someone hasn’t been hit yet,” said Don Todd, who lives on Ohio Street. “How much more congestion can that area stand?”

Todd was one of only about 15 residents who met at the Down East School to discuss possible changes to the city’s comprehensive plan.

Tuesday’s meeting, which drew considerably less attention from residents than previous meetings, focused on the more rural section of Bangor that stretches out Union and Ohio streets. The quadrant also includes Bangor International Airport and seven of the city’s 10 industrial parks.

The planning board has been facilitating public forums in different parts of the city to gather comment from residents. The board plans to use the information to perhaps update the existing plan.

“The comprehensive plan is a very general guideline for how land is used in the city,” explained planning board Chairman Bob Guerrette. “The city wants to look at [the plan] now to make sure we’re not overlooking anything.”

The current comprehensive plan was adopted in 2000 and doesn’t need to be amended by law until 2010, but Guerrette said the planning board is taking a more proactive approach to account for the many changes that have taken place since 2000.

In three meetings so far, the biggest concern has centered on traffic, but Guerrette said Tuesday that he isn’t sure whether the planning board can even remedy the problem.

“It’s been a very common sentiment across the city so far,” he said. “But I’m not sure if [traffic] can be addressed in the confines of the comprehensive plan.”

Lucy Quimby of Kenduskeag Avenue said she thought that the traffic issue was indeed an addressable concern for the planning board.

“A lot of what drives traffic is land use,” she said. “The decisions that you make about land use do affect traffic.”

Quimby’s husband, city Councilor Geoffrey Gratwick, expressed concerns about what would actually come out of the public meetings and challenged the current comprehensive plan as “unreadable.”

“It’s not a document that is useful to residents or to the planning board,” Gratwick said.

Guerrette said he agreed with Gratwick but also stressed that the comprehensive plan is like an encyclopedia that covers a wide array of things.

“We’re going into this with an open mind,” Guerrette said.

The final comprehensive plan meeting will be held at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 8, at the Mary Snow School.