Winchester Hospital Parking Lot Continues to be a Concern

They weren't on last night's agenda, but it was something the residents of Baldwin and Holton Street felt needed to be addressed.

They showed up at Town Hall Tuesday last night looking for help. During the public speak portion of the Board of Selectmen's meeting, residents Farbad Khaghani, Lorraine Malley, Dick Burke and Angela Vozzella, expressed their concerns about Winchester Hospital's satellite parking lot on Holton Street.

A few years ago the hospital went searching for additional parking because the lot on Highland Avenue was deemed not efficient enough. But the residents feel as though the traffic on the street is too much, and with a number of buses making the trip back and forth numerous times a day between Holton and Highland, not only is it not efficient, but Khaghani believes it also has a negative effect on the environment.

"Right now, because these lots are serving Winchester Hospital we're talking about at least a hundred buses going back and forth between these locations a day," said Khaghani, who is also a Town Meeting member from Precinct 8. "I can't get an estimate of the greenhouse gases because we don't have a number of how much gasoline they use per day. They've been doing this for years, so (the hospital) should have an idea of how much it costs."

Khaghani suggested the hospital, along with the town, compare the amount spent on gas and busing the hospital workers back and forth to the amount it would cost to improve the parking lot at Highland Street. And he believes, it's possible, that spending the money to fix Highland Street could be the cheaper option.

The other concern the residents have is that this problem is only going to get worse. With the 1021 Main Street address creating another 90 spaces, and with shuttling going to take place there as well, the traffic at Cross, Holton and Washington Street will become more of a problem.

"I'm concerned that this situation is getting worse, not better," Khaghani said. "This should not be an adversarial position. I love Winchester Hospital, both of my sons were born there, we want to work with them."

The chair of the Board of Selectmen, Jim Johnson, suggested that the board should send this problem over to the Traffic Advisory Committee where they can set up a traffic count, and find out how bad the problem is.

He informed the residents that once that is completed and they have a better idea of what's going on, then the committee can make suggestions on how to fix the traffic situation on Holton and Baldwin Street.

What makes the problem worse for people living along Holton Street, is that they are on the Woburn border and Woburn devised a traffic pattern that funnels the traffic down Holton Street. Malley suggested the board and the town look at removing Holton Street as a thru-way forcing the traffic to go in another direction.

"We're hoping that the Winchester Board of Selectmen and other officials will understand our concerns," said Malley, a lifelong Holton Street resident and former Town Meeting member. "Our neighborhoods have been jeopardized and changed and all we see is negativity from the satellite parking. We have no tax incentives that I'm aware of, yet we're incurring all the traffic from this because Woburn has tried to make all the traffic turn left out of the parking lot, which comes right through Winchester."

The Winchester residents over by the Holton Street parking lot made it clear that they are looking for any advice from the town in order to rectify this situation.

"We didn't come here to tell you what to do, we came here to ask for your help, we need it," Burke said. "This is not a small problem, it's a major problem. Increased traffic is a fact of life. If we can mitigate somehow that would be a very good thing."