Carol Sarshik has been driving through the Route 2 rotary for 46 years. She calls herself a survivor of it, though she said she isn’t sure “victim” is the wrong word either.
“I would turn blue,” she told The Concord Bridge, describing what it would take for her to hold her breath until the state actually fixes it.
Sarshik lives in Acton. She swims at the Beede Center and sees doctors at Emerson Hospital, two Concord destinations that put her on Route 2 regularly. She showed up at the June 24 public comment meeting at Concord Middle School after seeing social media posts urging people to make one point clear to MassDOT: This isn’t just a Concord problem.
The account of that meeting, published here last week, leaned on Acton voices Nathan Wolf and Patricia Costa, plus two attendees who asked not to be named. The Concord Bridge covered the meeting too, and its reporter, Dakota Antelman, talked to a different set of Acton and Concord residents whose comments deserve a wider audience in this town.
For example, Carol Phillips, an Acton resident who attended the hearing with her husband Gary said, “It’s just got such a big impact beyond sitting in traffic. I talk to too many people who live their life around avoiding the rotary.” Gary Phillips, for his part, backs the state’s preferred option to bridge Commonwealth Avenue over Route 2A, a preference that puts him on the same side as three of Concord’s five Select Board members.
Concord’s Select Board considers their response
The Concord Select Board’s alignment is the news Acton residents most need to know before this comment period closes. Antelman’s reporting quotes Concord Select Board members Mary Hartman, Paul Boehm and Dean Banfield, along with chair Wendy Rovelli, as saying they favor the Partial Cloverleaf Interchange, the same concept Nathan Wolf ranked highest, based on concerns for cyclist safety. Rovelli told The Bridge that the board plans to collect member feedback and draft a formal letter to MassDOT for approval this month.
That matters because, as reported last week, MassDOT told attendees there will be no public vote and no survey on the four concepts. The agency said it’s listening instead for a “fatal flaw” in any one design, a standard that one Acton attendee considered unlikely to surface.
A unified letter from an elected Select Board might carry different weight than an individual resident’s email to MassDOTMajorProjects@dot.state.ma.us. Hartman told The Bridge it isn’t clear “how much support they need,” given that this is a state project with backing from Beacon Hill. If Concord’s town government effectively puts its thumb on the scale this month, Acton residents who want a say have a narrowing window to weigh in before that letter is finalized, not after.
The regional argument Sarshik and Phillips are making also has some backing beyond Acton. Eric Bourassa, transportation director at the Metropolitan Area Planning Council MAPC), told The Bridge that MassDOT rarely advances a project like this without buy-in from local officials, and that the agency has done more listening in response to community pushback than it once did. “It’s not like the ’60s anymore,” he said, a reference to an era when highway expansion cut through communities regardless of local objection. Legislators, according to that same reporting, have also pointed out that the rotary’s effects reach commuters as far away as Leominster and Fitchburg, which undercuts any framing of this as a Concord-only decision, even before Acton’s own commuters are counted.
How you can weigh in on the decision
None of this changes the mechanics described in last week’s Rotary-related article. Send comments to MassDOTMajorProjects@dot.state.ma.us, or by mail to Carrie Lavallee, P.E., Chief Engineer, MassDOT, 10 Park Plaza, Boston, MA 02116, Attention: Major Projects, Project File No. 602091. What it does change is the timing. If Concord’s Select Board is close to putting a preference in writing, the Acton residents who talked to The Bridge, and the ones who haven’t spoken up yet, have less runway than it might have seemed a few days ago.
Greg Jarboe is a former editor of the Acton Minuteman and a former chair of the Acton Select Board, and a current member of the Acton Finance Committee, Public Works Facility Committee, and Economic Development Committee, and writes for the Acton Exchange about issues of community concern.
