Dan Halston’s letter in the Oct. 23 Voice is absolutely correct. High school parking on the streets off Concord Avenue has become a burden for residents and a safety hazard.
Cottage, Myrtle, Oak, and Orchard streets plus Stone Road are student parking lots. Goden Street, effectively the drop-off and pick-up driveway to the high school, is so dangerous that even the students know not to park there. How many more students need to be hit by cars on these streets before we take the danger seriously?
As early as the unveiling of the plans for the new school in Jan. 2018, the residents begged the Building Committee to provide student parking on campus and return the driveway to where it had been successfully placed for 50 years. Meeting after meeting, working with the committee, the School Department, Community Development, and the Transportation Advisory Committee (TAC) yielded no reasonable solutions. These very narrow streets were never designed to be parking lots or school entrances and exits. Fancy traffic lights do not change that.
Cottage and Myrtle bear the added burden of access to the Wellington School, as does Goden when the turn restriction on Myrtle is in place. Goden, Oak, Orchard and Stone streets bear the traffic headed to the Burbank, Chenery, or out of town on School Street. Our neighborhood knows we will host parking for games at the fields and the rink, and even events at Underwood Playground or the library. But we are not a 180-day student/parent parking lot!
TAC has been unable to create a solution. The town is spending hundreds of thousands on Concord Avenue to turn the beautiful boulevard entrance to the town into a parking lot!
Can we please work together to make all side streets safer by getting student parking onto the high school campus where it belongs?
Anne Marie S. Mahoney, Goden Street
