On Upland Road, warnings preceded pedestrian collision
Resident Karen Jourdenais spent years raising concerns that town officials say couldn’t be addressed due to a funding shortage.
Karen Jourdenais has lived on Upland Road for nearly 20 years. She loves her home.
With its steep gabled roof, prominent brick chimney, and ornate doorframe, the house is like a fairy-tale cottage tucked into a residential Acton neighborhood where one would expect to feel safe.
One recent Saturday, the fairy tale turned into a nightmare — one Jourdenais had predicted, and one that town officials say couldn’t be addressed due to a funding shortage.
She was inside when she heard a sound so sudden and violent, Jourdenais could only describe it as “destruction.”
“My husband, who was outside, heard the crash, and then turned to see a car appear through a wooded area where it shouldn’t,” she said in an interview with The Acton Bridge. “He ran into the house to call 911.”
Jourdenais dashed outside, her heart racing.
“I ran over, and there was a woman lying on the ground, not moving but conscious and lucid,” she said. “I asked her, ‘What can I do for you?’ She asked me to call her husband, and then she asked me to find her dog.”
Margaret Romero had been out running with her dog when a car jumped the curb and struck her. According to the police report, the driver, Sarah Satterthwaite, said she fell asleep at the wheel. But residents question that explanation, pointing out that it happened around 3 p.m. and that the driver had to have turned onto Upland only moments earlier.
“I thought I had taken the safer route by getting off of Harrington and moving to the sidewalk on Upland. I had no idea how wrong I was,” Romero wrote in an email to The Acton Bridge, “and it sounds like the town is well aware of these dangers.”
After consulting her lawyer, Romero elected not to comment further on the accident. The police report states she suffered serious injuries to her legs and head.
Satterthwaite, age 81, of Acton, was charged with negligent operation of a motor vehicle and is still awaiting trial.
For Jourdenais, the crash wasn’t just horrifying; it was maddening, too. She had spent years warning the town that something like this could happen.
A known issue
Jourdenais first raised concerns in October 2018, when she filed an official complaint under the town’s Traffic Calming Policy — a process created to let residents report road safety issues and have them reviewed by Acton’s Traffic Management Group, which includes representatives from the police department, public works, and town administration.
In her initial complaint, she expressed concern about the growing traffic in her neighborhood and the speeding cars along their stretch of road.
Following her complaint, Jourdenais said the town safety officer acknowledged the issue and informed her that they would have to wait for a town-funded cut-through traffic study to address the concerns. The study took place and Upland Road was flagged as an area of concern, but no further action was taken.
Jourdenais filed another complaint in 2021. This time, she said, she was told to wait for the Comprehensive Transportation and Mobility Study to identify potential solutions. However, that study has been on hold since 2023, with plans for it to resume this fall.
The Bridge confirmed these complaints through a records request to the town.
Other residents of Upland Road have also been hoping for change.
Laura Mills told The Bridge in an email, “I can’t tell you how often I hear brakes screech at the top of Pine Street,” referring to the lone stop sign on Upland Road that Jourdenais said cars often drive past.
Ann Bailey has lived on Upland Road since 1988 and said the street was known to be dangerous when she moved in. Over the years, Bailey has seen conditions worsen, she told The Bridge in an interview, particularly with the growing traffic volume and “especially with the advent of Google Maps and GPS. When there’s a traffic jam on Route 2, people use Upland Road as a shortcut, and that only adds to the speed and danger.”
Upland Road qualifies for cut-through traffic solutions
To qualify, streets had to have at least 1,000 vehicles drive on the road a day and traffic volumes five times greater than projected.
Upland Road had 2,980 cars counted in a single day, or 9.26 times the estimated amount.
A lack of funds
Director of Public Works Alan Cathcart didn’t want to comment on the safety of Upland Road but acknowledged that a lot of safety projects have recently been set aside due to a lack of funds.
“One of the biggest challenges they have is oftentimes what might seem like a simple ask is far more complex,” he said to The Bridge. “If there isn’t funding, it may simply just get put on a list, and then people feel like, ‘Well, what good is that?’”
Acton’s own cut-through traffic study in 2019 identified Upland Road and 17 other streets as experiencing significantly higher traffic than expected for residential neighborhoods. The study said these streets “require additional analysis and cut-through treatment solutions.”
To qualify, streets had to have at least 1,000 vehicles drive on the road a day and traffic volumes five times greater than projected. Upland Road had 2,980 cars counted in a single day, or 9.26 times the estimated amount. A records request The Bridge filed with the police department showed there have been 44 reported crashes on Upland Road in the past 20 years.
Any remediation recommended by the study was halted due to the Covid-19 pandemic and staff turnover, Cathcart said.
“If you don’t have personnel or funding for projects, you don’t have a project,” he said.
Cathcart hopes that with increased funds and streamlining the complaint process, more projects will be completed in the upcoming years to prevent more crashes. But without it, he says, “we are going to be back at the same place of wishing we could do things, but can’t.”
