WAYLAND — To turn, or not to turn. That is the question being debated for one particular intersection in Wayland.
A sign informs drivers on Glezen Lane that they can’t turn left onto Old Sudbury Road (Route 27) between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. Likewise, no one on Route 27 can turn right onto Glezen Lane during those hours.
Some rebellious citizens make the turn anyway.
“I’m now being told . . . that I can’t make a certain turn?” said Howard Abel, who has lived in the neighborhood for 43 years. “It’s a little bit mind-boggling to me how it could come to this.”
The restrictions stem from a 2008 legal settlement related to construction of the Wayland Town Center development. With a permanent barrier now slated for the intersection, the dispute has wound up back in court.
What started out as an inconvenience for some has evolved into a grass-roots movement of sorts for many folks who live off Glezen Lane, a quiet residential street lined with towering shade trees, million-dollar homes, and perfectly manicured lawns.
“We want to be able to use our road whenever we want to use it,” said Susan Pope, a former state legislator who lives on Moore Road, one of the streets that branch off Glezen. “It’s a public road that the taxpayers in Wayland pay for.”
The controversial turning restrictions came about after 13 residents took the town and Wayland Town Center’s developer to court over their concerns that the new shopping center at Route 27 and Route 20 would bring an influx of traffic to their neighborhood. In July 2008 the parties reached an agreement to settle the lawsuit.
Under the terms of the deal, the town promised to implement a series of traffic mitigation measures on Glezen Lane, continue to monitor traffic volumes, and take additional actions if traffic increased.
In the fall of 2012, when a Super Stop & Shop store opened at Wayland Town Center, the first phase of turning restrictions went into effect, and turning left from Glezen Lane was prohibited on weekends from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. To deter shortcut-seeking motorists, the town also installed “No Access to Town Center” signs at entry points to Glezen Lane, which stretches across the northern half of Wayland past Route 126 and into Weston.
As traffic increased, the agreement called for the town to install additional speed tables (a type of speed bump that is wide and flat at the top) on Glezen Lane, and extend the turning restrictions to weekdays.
Now, according to the settlement, the town must reconfigure the intersection and construct a permanent barrier with curbing that will literally set the turning restrictions in stone, physically preventing cars on Glezen Lane from turning left onto Route 27.
However, the plan has met with resistance: The fire chief has criticized it, the police chief said he was never even consulted about it, and residents don’t want to pay for it. (In April, when selectmen put forth Article 15 at Town Meeting, seeking $120,000 to reconstruct the intersection, it was soundly defeated by voters.)
In addition to a paper petition opposing the restrictions, residents started an online petition at Change.org that has garnered 186 signatures.
But the turning restrictions have their defenders. David Bernstein, who lives on Glezen Lane and was one of the 13 residents who filed the original lawsuit, said the plaintiffs weren’t being unreasonable.
The developer of the Town Center project had initially suggested turning restrictions and traffic mitigation for Glezen Lane, he said, but ultimately Wayland’s Planning Board approved a special permit “with no traffic mitigation requirements whatsoever.” The decision prompted Bernstein and the other residents to appeal the decision in court, he said.
Bernstein believes traffic volumes will continue to increase unless permanent turn restrictions are put in place, but he’s open to discussing alternatives.
“Is there a better way to do it?” he said.
Enforcing the no-turn rule has not been easy for police, according to Chief Robert Irving. “Residents routinely ignore the restrictions,” he said in an affidavit. “Officers have reported that residents become upset when stopped and cannot understand why they can’t access Route 27 in the same manner that they have for many years.”
Fire Chief David Houghton said if the intersection is reconstructed, fire apparatus will no longer be able to safely turn right onto Glezen Lane from Route 27, which will slow down their response time.
In April, the town filed a motion in Middlesex Superior Court to suspend the terms of the 2008 agreement and lift the turning restrictions so that the town can conduct a new traffic study. The motion is under advisement.
Meanwhile, Abel and his wife recently conducted their own experiment, timing each other to see who could get to the center of town first. His wife took the longer, legal route via Route 126, and he made the left turn onto Route 27. Abel said it took him 5 or 6 minutes to reach the center of town — his wife about a half hour.
“It’s a major inconvenience,” said Abel.
“Are you kidding me?” he said. “I don’t care, I do it anyway.”
Emily Sweeney can be reached at esweeney@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @emilysweeney.