The Goddard School Approved Despite Traffic Concerns

An application to build a new preschool across from the and enlarge the existing Greenbriar office building have been approved, over concerns about traffic raised by the Town Plan and Zoning Commission.

The application allows The Goddard School to be build an 8,000 square foot preschool at 2 Bridgewater Road, for expansion of the Greenbriar office building and for a small maintenance building to be constructed.

A traffic engineer presenting for property owner Peter Fishman, president of PKT Development, told the commission that after studying traffic at the Bridgewater/Brickyard/Route 4 intersection and looking at data provided by the Goddard School, he had concluded queue lengths would increase by one to two cars per green light. The impact on the intersection’s traffic flow would be relatively small, he said, and added that Farmington Town Engineer Matt Blume agreed with the findings.

The traffic engineer insisted the impact on traffic would be slight, with some light cycles seeing a few cars turning out and some none.

But Commissioner Don Doeg was concerned that even one or two cars more turning out of Bridgewater would impede those turning out of Brickyard Road onto Route 4. And with an estimated 50 cars dropping off children, at two cars per cycle, Doeg said the addition of the school could worsen traffic problems.

“Instead of 10 cars getting out of Brickyard during the green cycle, you only get six and pretty soon we’ll be down past or . It’s going to be a mess,” Doeg said.

The Goddard School application may be part of a larger picture, since the is proposed for the next intersection and a backage road connecting Bridgewater Road and Melrose Drive could create the along the Farmington River. That could mean a larger amount of traffic than the intersection can currently handle, commissioners suggested.

“I fear you’re painting yourself into a corner,” Chairman Phil Dunn said. “If this [traffic analysis] doesn’t turn out to be accurate and we experience much worse backups, I cannot see that we would allow anything else significant to feed into that road. You may have to get the state involved. That would be my warning to you.”

Fishman agreed.

“I don’t feel there’s additional development that can be done there without work on Brickyard Road and turn lanes and significant traffic change but this application on its own I don’t believe warrants that kind of change,” Fishman said.

He said the commission would see a much more advanced plan when the temple comes before it.