Business & Tech

Medfield Planning Board: Traffic Flow a Concern at Proposed CVS Expansion

Members of the Medfield Planning Board expressed concerned regarding the entrance and exit points of the current and proposed CVS site to the pharmacy's representatives.

When representatives from presented and discussed its site plans for the proposed expansion of the current pharmacy on Main Street, it was clear members of the Medfield Planning Board had concerns about traffic flow in and out of the site.

“Traffic flow has been brought up before in our engineer’s report,” said Medfield Planning Board chair Wright Dickinson. “The proximity of this entrance, exit to Route 109 has been brought up before. This is important and quite a bit of time will be spent on it.”

Dickinson was true to his word as the board spent nearly an hour discussing its concerns regarding traffic flow at the Oct. 17 public hearing and will continue those discussions on Nov. 7 when the hearing resumes at

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The board’s greatest concern is the traffic congestion that currently exists along the intersection of Routes 109 and 27, with the entrance and exit points of the CVS site too close to that intersection.

“[Routes 109 and 27 intersection is] dangerous because people … by the time they come out of this intersection, they are dying to get into town and they’re flying [around the corner] and you can’t always see somebody coming,” Dickinson said.

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Planning Board member Elissa Franco elaborated on Dickinson’s concern of not seeing motorists entering CVS along Route 27 from the Route 109 intersection when traffic backs up.

“The [proposed] landscaping that is going on here at the corner … what I am seeing happen is if people pull up to the entrance here [on Route 27] and someone is either backing in or backing out to pull out of a parking space … the vehicle stops here on 27 waiting to pull in [to the parking lot] and people come through the light, around the corner fairly fast and get rear-ended right before they pull into CVS,” Franco said. “So, my concern is, I know that you have provided for this landscaping here, but I think that for the site, it can impede around the site from the corner and I think this is where a lot of rear-ending accidents happen. People are stopping on 27 waiting to pull into the parking lot. I’m wondering if the landscaping at the corner will prevent people from Route 109 turning onto 27 from seeing people stopped.”

 Jason Adams, the traffic engineer conducting the study of the site, said the site plan calls for the two entrance and exit points of the site on Route 27 to be condensed into one; pushing the entry and exit points further from the intersection.

“We are moving that entry to the site further from the intersection,” Adams said. “Motorists will still be able to come around that turn more and they should be able to see [vehicles stopped on Route 27]. In this case [now] you have a vehicle making the turn and accelerating through the turn and there’s a parked vehicle on 27. We are moving that entry point further form the intersection to allow [more reaction time].”

 Dickinson, not convinced the one, full-access drive on the site along Route 27 significantly improves the current problem, asked what alternatives had been looked at.

“How important is that entrance off of 27 to your whole thing?” asked Dickinson. “If that was to go away, what would that mean to your site?”

Paul Beck, site developer from Gershman Brown Crowley Inc., said it would eliminate the proposed expansion.

“[Eliminating the Route 27 entrance and exit] means you wouldn’t be able to get into the site and you would probably have the CVS and the there for the next 15 years,” Beck said. “It’s that critical. Even if you have to make a couple of movements, you still have to be able to get in from all four directions. Everything we’ve done over the last two months has been trying to [increase] the ease to get into that site because we recognized the same thing you did right off the bat.”

Beck said at one point during site planning, there was discussion of knocking the entire building down and starting over.

“We looked at knocking the whole building down and repositioning it on the site and it didn’t come out any better than it is now,” Beck said. “We are dealing with constraints. We have an existing building, existing street orientation and what we try to do is alleviate as much as possible by making the entrance and exit one and pushing it as far away from the intersection as we could.”

A major point Adams made during his traffic study of the site had to do with trip generation, or amount of traffic to and from the site.

“Trip generation for this site is unique in the sense that the proposed site is shown to generate fewer vehicle trips than the existing site,” Adams said. “A pharmacy with the drive-thru generates trips at a lower rate than a sub shop. It’s pretty straightforward math.”

 Adams said in response to the board’s concerns of traffic flow and congestion along Route 27 that less traffic in and out of the site would probably reduce risk of accidents and congestion.

“It’s an intersection that obviously doesn’t work great today,” Adams said, referring to the Routes 109 and 27 traffic lights. “You can argue that we are actually taking traffic away from the intersection.”

The Medfield Planning Board and representatives from CVS will reconvene at Town Hall on Nov. 7 to continue its public hearing of the proposed expansion. At that meeting, Adams will follow-up on questions the board had about the traffic study, including crash data at the site and information he will have received from discussions with Medfield Police regarding traffic safety and issues at the site.

Phil Henry, the civil engineer on the CVS project, will likely answer further questions regarding parking and the flow of the drive-thru. The representatives collectively will provide site triangles of the proposal as well as architectural renderings of the building.

There will also likely be more discussion regarding the proposed site’s landscaping and ascetic appeal.

Check back at Medfield Patch Thursday, Oct. 27 for a review of Adams’ traffic study at the CVS site.


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