Neighbors and experts clash as Westborough planning board reopens record on proposed drive‑through at 210 Turnpike Road

The Westborough Planning Board reopened the record and heard presentations, expert testimony and extended public comment on a special permit application to add a drive‑through at 210 Turnpike Road.

The applicant's engineer, Sam Alfronti of Soley Engineering, told the board the site has been designed to meet the town's drive‑through regulations and peer review comments. "We do have a 15 car queue," Alfronti said, describing an 8‑vehicle queue to the order point and 7 vehicles beyond it and noting the plan exceeds the town's 12‑vehicle requirement. He said his team calculated about 58 new entries and 56 exits during the weekday AM peak and used a 55% pass‑by rate consistent with industry practice.

Why it matters: immediate abutters and nearby residents said the proposed access pattern would route most vehicle traffic through narrow residential Park Street instead of directly to Route 9, risking long queues, blocked driveways and impeded emergency access. Attorney Sean Regan, representing Park Place Condominium and The Villages at Walker Meadow, said his client retained an independent traffic expert and urged the board to maintain its prior denial, arguing the applicant's materials show unsafe queuing and inadequate sight distance. "Since the applicant cannot demonstrate compliance with the mandatory safety standards and their own evidence shows the project creates dangerous conditions, they have failed to meet their burden for a special permit approval under Massachusetts law," Regan said.

What board members and neighbors raised: speakers and written submitters pointed to multiple concerns including (1) sight‑distance limitations caused by a fence at the southerly property line; (2) the potential for on‑street queuing to extend through a residential corridor and impede school buses and ambulances; (3) a dispute over which crash‑history years to use in collision analysis; and (4) possible downstream impacts once the BWALT shared‑use path is complete and pedestrian crossings increase.

Applicant response and peer review: Alfronti said the traffic study was prepared using Institute of Transportation Engineers trip generation data and that GPI and the town engineer peer‑reviewed the analysis. He emphasized observed average queues at comparable sites were below the 15‑vehicle design and that his team's 2031 build/no‑build intersection analyses showed only negligible change in level‑of‑service attributable to the project.

Next steps: The board closed public comment and said it will review the full written record, including letters submitted by abutters and the applicant's supplemental materials, and aim to vote on findings at the board's Oct. 7 meeting. The board also discussed—without deciding—possible permit conditions suggested by town counsel and applicant counsel, including a one‑year post‑opening review tied to police reports and a requirement that the applicant propose mitigation if queuing causes incidents.

The hearing record remains open for the board's review; the board did not take a final vote on the special permit at this meeting.