By Julie McCay Turner
Willson Park is located at the intersection of The Great Road, North Road, and Concord Road with the short section once known as Park Row along the western side of the triangular park included for good measure. It is both the site of Bedford’s most picturesque ceremony — the Liberty Pole Capping each April — and some of the town’s nastiest traffic jams. Southbound traffic builds up along Carlisle and North Roads in the mornings, and eastbound traffic clogs Concord Road, sometimes beyond Evans Avenue, in the afternoon.
Balancing the character of Bedford’s Willson Park with the imperatives of safety and traffic flow around its perimeter has concerned neighbors, Town officials, and consultants for more than five years. Residents invited to a ‘WalkShop’ on May 16 brought opinions and plenty of questions. According to VHB project manager Laura Castelli, “The objective of the walk is to further the process of determining a preferred recommendation . . . that will address the most serious concerns and deficiencies identified at Willson Park.”
In 2012, Vanasse Hangen Brustlin Inc, a team of engineers, scientists, planners, and designers known to the Town as VHB, produced the Great Road Streetscape Master Plan, including five options for the redesign of Willson Park. Click here to view a scalable PDF showing the 2012 Willson Park proposals.
Reassessing the 2012 recommendations is necessary because none of them offers a perfect solution, and because Bedford adopted a Complete Streets Policy, including a level of service that meets the needs of pedestrians and cyclists as well as drivers in May 2016. According to the policy, “The Town will, to the maximum extent practical, plan, design, construct, maintain, and operate all streets to provide for a comprehensive and integrated network of facilities for all users.”
In an April memo to the Town, Castelli added, “Traffic demands are frequently over the capacity of the existing intersections, with several approaches operating at a failing level of service during part of the day.” With 35 crashes between 2012 and 2016, the intersection has a crash rate of 0.93, a rate that is nearly double the statewide crash rate of 0.58 and MassDOT’s District 4 crash rate of .056 for un-signalized intersections. The high crash rate, coupled with the intersection’s high traffic count, indicates that traffic lights are warranted for the area around Willson Park.
While Castelli promised that the traffic lights along The Great Road would be synchronized, residents were unconvinced, concerned about the noise of heavy trucks shifting through their gears, loud vehicles accelerating from a full stop, and the chirping of walk signals for the hearing-impaired during otherwise quiet times of the day.
There was some consensus among the attendees that a single-lane rotary might be an attractive solution; individual attendees favored keeping the green space and its tree canopy as a vest-pocket park, perhaps with some seating.
The notion of a “Bedford Farms” crosswalk was clarified. It would be sited near the popular ice cream stand because of sight lines that offer sufficient distance to see walkers and stop safely.
Everyone agreed that in a perfect world, Bedford would not be a ‘pass-thru’ community where commuters are on their way to someplace beyond the town. The time to determine a reasonable accommodation may be now. VHB consultants will return with new proposals within the next few months.
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While waiting for a solution to the traffic problem at that intersection, a no left turn sign could be posted and enforced from 4p-6p for the traffic that is traveling east bound on Rte. 62 towards Bedford center. The traffic at times is backing up to Hartwell road.
This intersection is a nightmare for all west Bedford residents every weekday afternoon along with the hundreds of vehicles that just sit there idling every afternoon. Its also very dangerous, especially vehicles taking a left turn onto Great Road head onto the oncoming traffic and also to pedestrians trying to cross it. The proposed rotary is the wrong solution for this for such a high traffic flow. The more practical solution is to widen the roadway to create three lanes with a signalized intersection. The new lane would be for left turns onto Great Road. The land needed to create this from Wilson Park can be restored by eliminating the existing slip ramp . Besides correcting the huge traffic back up every afternoon the signalized intersection can also provide safe crossings for pedestrians and cyclists.
I would think the best, most sensible solution would be the suggested single-lane rotary .
I agree on the need to alleviate the traffic situation around Willson Park. The five alternatives sketched out in the Master Plan seem comprehensive, and I can’t imagine that VHB will produce something better. Any solution picked will be a compromise among mutually exclusive goals. I think that Willson Park is lovely and I understand that it honors one of our first Minutemen, but I think the luxury of having the park in that location is too expensive compared to its cost in traffic congestion. Surely we can find another place to honor Capt. Willson and his company. I think that a small rotary at that location would be a good solution.
The Great Road Streetscape Master Plan is helpful in listings the impacts of each of the five designs, but it does not clearly show where traffic lights would be placed. Would very much like to know about that.