The Carroll School’s existing Wayland campus (top) and proposed expansion. Click image to enlarge.
At the October 20 Select Board meeting, Carroll School officials presented plans and heard concerns about traffic relating to a proposal to expand their Wayland campus close to the Lincoln town line on Old Sudbury Road.
The Wayland campus of the Carroll School, a private school for students with dyslexia and other learning disabilities, serves about 50 students in grades 8–9, though grade 8 is split with Baker Bridge Road campus, which is also home to grades 6–7. Grades 1–5 are on Trapelo Road in Waltham just over the Cambridge Reservoir causeway from Lincoln. If the expansion is approved by Wayland, that campus will add more students gradually, with the goal of serving 250 students after three to four years.
School officials told the Selects that the new traffic pattern would be modeled on that of the Lincoln campus, which does not cause backups on Baker Bridge Road. They also said they would maintain the existing setback as well as trees and shrubs that provide screening.
A traffic study that the school submitted along with other documents to the Wayland Planning Board says the number of car trips would eventually increase by more than 900 (about 450 each way) on school days. The expansion will not result in added congestion at the intersection of Old Sudbury Road and Route 117, Ken Cram of traffic consultant Fuss & O’Neill told the board.
But in an October 6 letter to the Select Board, residents of 18 homes on Longmeadow, Old Sudbury, and Linway Roads expressed fears about neighborhood traffic and said the town should enter into an intermunicipal agreement with Wayland on a binding traffic management plan. They also asked for:
- A prohibition on using Longmeadow Road for pass-through access to Waltham Road, which they said now occurs.
- Construction of a sidewalk along Waltham Road at the school’s expense.
- Incremental annual step-ups in faculty and students using the Wayland campus over a period of seven years, with annual increases subject to traffic review by both Wayland and Lincoln.
“It is not reasonable to place the burdens of fundamental changes to the neighborhood’s character, aesthetics and safety on the broader community,” they wrote. “The Carroll School’s praiseworthy mission does not provide entitlement to have such a disproportionate and negative impact on the community.”
When the Wayland campus was first proposed in 2016, “it was described as being for 40 students. We never really envisioned something like this,” Longmeadow Road resident Colin Sullivan said at the Select Board meeting.”There is a feeling of breach of trust.”
“We’re not going to feel safe with the little children on our streets,” said Gina Arons, also of Longmeadow Road. “We don’t want to be [back] here after somebody gets hurt.”
As a resident living on Lincoln Road in North Wayland, I am deeply concerned about the Carroll school expansion: it is already difficult (and dangerous) in the mornings to head north on Lincoln Road across what at that point is known as Waltham Road (Old Sudbury Rd). The additional traffic anticipated from the expansion will make that nearly impossible unless that intersection becomes a four-way stop.