Langwood consultant suggests radical road changes for Fells
Published on December 20th, 2006
STONEHAM, MA - A Florida-based consulting firm pitched a bold renovation of the Fells Reservation Parkways that would slash the four lane roadway in half to create cycling and pedestrian walkways.
According to Ian Lockwood, of Orlando, Florida's Glatting Jackson, the current layout of the historic parkways encouraged high-speed, high-capacity commuter traffic to the detriment of recreational users in the Fells Reservation.
To discourage such vehicular use in the area, which extends from Main Street in south Stoneham, past Spot pond and the former Boston Regional Medical Center (BRMC), and towards the Malden and Medford lines, Lockwood and his team proposed a number of roadway calming measures, including:
•A reduction in vehicular travel lanes from four to two;
•The installation of five roundabouts;
•Creating textured left-hand turning lanes that give the illusion of a narrower road;
•Reducing the total width of each travel lane;
•And constructing valley gutters along Elm Street to both facilitate parking for local residents and also to create the appearance of a narrower road.
"If folks would just do the speed limit, it would help things dramatically," said Lockwood of the present-day condition of the Fells Reservation Parkways.
"But the road just says, 'Go fast.' So we need to get the parkway to start enforcing itself. And there are quite a few ways to do that," the consultant concluded.
The cause of much controversy over recent months, the state's Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR), which owns the roadway, announced the start of the since-concluded visioning study for the parkways a few months ago.
Causing apprehension and distrust amongst Fells activist groups and local officials from communities outside Stoneham, DCR approached the Gutierrez Company, which has proposed constructing a 450-unit housing development at the BRMC, to foot the $60,000 bill for the study.
Last Monday during the first of three public input sessions conducted by Glatting Jackson, scores of area residents and elected officials, primarily from surrounding towns, lambasted Lockwood and DCR, alleging that the entire process was designed to push through the Burlington developer's Langwood Commons project.
Although the Mayor of Melrose, at least two Melrose Aldermen, a Winchester Planning official, and both Medford and Melrose's State Representatives attended either Monday or Thursday's gatherings at Stoneham High School, only two of the town's own elected officials showed: Selectman Tony Kennedy and Planning Board Chairman Gus Niewenhous.
Despite the aggressive, curt, and often openly hostile outcries expressed by the general public last Monday, virtually every audience member praised the planning firm's final recommendation three-days later.
The proposal
According to Lockwood, the best way to return the roadways back to their park-like feel entailed discouraging cut-through traffic.
Specifically, the consultant pointed to the two end-points of the parkways near Main Street and Elm Streets.
"There are some real constraints to the north on Main Street and to the south near Elm Street that aren't going away any time soon," Lockwood explained, referring to the two single-lane bottlenecks.
In essence the DCR hired planner argued, the existence of four travel lanes in-between those two congested end-points encouraged commuters battling rush-hour traffic to seek a cut-through route along the parkways.
So in order to eradicate that tendency, the Florida firm advised seizing the two-travel lanes closest to Spot Pond and recycling them into pedestrian and bicyclist friendly pathways.
The recommendation further involved narrowing the new two-lane, two-way traffic parkway down, another measure that would slow cars by creating a constrained, tight feel for drivers. Yet another bold component of the proposal, the various u-turn lanes currently situated along the roadways would be transformed into crosswalk-equipped roundabouts at five major points, including:
•Elm Street at the current Molyneaux Circle;
•Ravine Road;
•The former BRMC's south site drive;
•The north site drive of the hospital property;
•And North Border Road at Fallon Road nearby I-93 north and South and Main Streets.
Although Thursday's crowd was largely receptive to the proposed renovations, many wanted the Glatting representatives to concede that any major redevelopment of the former hospital site was incompatible with the new vision. However, not only did Lockwood generally refuse to make that conclusion, insisting that choice would have to be made by surrounding communities, but he suggested that such a re-use of the hospital site would not likely result in a huge surge of daily traffic. Specifically, the Glatting principal referred to traffic estimates conducted when the hospital was fully operational versus when it closed, saying that although the immediate property vacancy drove traffic volumes down, cut-through commuters soon filled that capacity vacuum.
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