Remedy proposed for conservation parking headache

A two-pronged proposal from the Traffic and Sidewalk Committee and the Conservation Commission seeks to alleviate parking headaches for Indian Hill Road and Winthrop Circle residents.

Residents in the neighborhood said street parking for visitors to Cat Rock/80 Acres conservation land has spiraled out of control for years, leading to vehicles being parked on both sides of the road, as well as loose dogs and other incidents.

To address the issues, the Traffic and Sidewalk Committee and the Conservation Commission put forward a dual proposal: install signs limiting parking to residents from the park entrance to Bay State Road and construct a gravel parking area for six to eight vehicles for visitors.

“That would allow an out-of-town person, six to eight of them, to show up and park in one of these new spaces. If they didn’t find one, they would just have to go someplace else,” Traffic and Sidewalk Committee member Ann Wiedie said on March 11. “It would preserve for Weston residents quite a bit of parking and really cut down on the volume of people parking on the street.”

The parking restrictions will likely be considered by the Select Board at its March 24 meeting, while a $65,300 funding request will be placed on the May 4 Town Meeting warrant for the lot.

A similar parking restriction was instituted on Drabbington Way in 2018 with great success in the neighborhood; however, some of the vehicles that may have parked there prior to the restriction instead moved to other neighborhoods, including Indian Hill Road.

At least a few neighborhood residents, several of whom have been advocating for the project at recent meetings, support the solution.

“There are a couple of serious safety incidents that have already taken place,” Tricia Liu, a neighborhood resident, said in an email. “The change is long-awaited and welcomed by the local residents, including veterans, seniors and children.”

Weston Police Capt. Thomas Kelly, the department’s liaison to the Traffic and Sidewalk Committee, said the proposal is a “reasonable response,” but there are concerns about moving the problem.

Conservation Administrator Jordan McCarron, in a March 12 presentation to the Finance Committee, said the gravel lot plans were designed by the town’s engineering department, and the project would move the parks’ gate further into the park and place the lot on the conservation land. State law permits small “appropriate in size” gravel parking areas on conservation land, according to McCarron.

“This would really be dedicated to users of the conservation land,” he said, emphasizing the project goal is to “minimize the displacement of vehicles.”

The Finance Committee unanimously supported the parking lot proposal.

Although the lot would reduce some of the congestion, Wiedie and other Traffic and Sidewalk Committee members said the parking signs would need to complement it to ensure residents’ concerns are addressed.

“My feeling, and the feeling of residents in the area, is that alleviation of the problems wouldn’t happen without additional signage,” she said. “We don’t really know how many out-of-town people are parking there. What it should cut down on is people from out-of-town and dog walkers.”