Dead ends come to life

Erin Lane in Norfolk used to be a dead end, a quiet little nook of town where only a few people walked every day.

You wouldn't know it now.

Like a number of other cul-de-sacs in Norfolk, the lane has been ''punched through" to a new street. The former dead end is now part of a network of winding, sidewalk-lined roads used heavily by walkers, joggers, and children on bicycles.

Scott Biron, who lives on the corner of Berkshire Street and Erin Lane, walks his dog on the streets and said he likes the sense of community that comes from being part of a larger neighborhood. ''I know everybody, if not by name, by sight," he said.

Cul-de-sacs, with their large, circular turnarounds, might seem to be the ultimate in suburban living. They are prized by many home buyers because there's little traffic and plenty of privacy. They can be found throughout the western suburbs and have been common in subdivision development across the United States since the 1960s, planners say.

But some observers perceive drawbacks. They see the dead ends creating micro-neighborhoods that require people to venture out onto a main road simply to buy a gallon of milk, and children to risk their lives on busy roads as they ride bikes to see friends. Public safety vehicles have only one route to a house. The cul-de-sacs also prevent the formation of a larger community, some contend.

The pluses and minuses of cul-de-sacs have been the subject of quiet debate among city planners since the 1980s with the rise of the ''new urbanist" movement, which advocates walkable communities, according to Dennis Frenchman, a professor in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

A few communities have taken action. Ten years ago, Olympia, Wash., prohibited cul-de-sacs, except where the topography prevents street connections, according to Governing magazine. Baltimore County in Maryland did much the same thing five years ago, and Austin, Texas, pushed for subdivisions that were more walkable, attempting to ban cul-de-sacs in the late 1990s.

Norfolk is another community that has acted to discourage cul-de-sacs, beginning even before these other efforts.

Back in the late 1980s, as Norfolk's farms and fields increasingly were taken over by single-family houses, the Planning Board decided to minimize the use of cul-de-sacs in subdivisions. Town officials did not want to ''isolate people into little pods," said Daniel Winslow, then the chairman of the panel. In his opinion, the effort paid off.

''Fast-forward almost 20 years later. As the neighborhoods have started to develop in Norfolk, we can now see what the impact of that regulatory change was," said Winslow, who pointed out the former cul-de-sacs on a drive through town this summer. ''Children can bicycle for miles and never leave a neighborhood street. They can visit their friends from other neighborhoods without going on the main roads. Residents can take walks that go somewhere. . . . There's multiple links into multiple neighborhoods, just knitting neighborhoods together."

What Norfolk did that planners say hasn't been done in many towns is both severely limit the length of cul-de-sacs, thus discouraging their use by developers, and require that wherever possible, such streets are eventually opened up when adjacent land is developed.

The town's subdivision regulations allow for cul-de-sacs if there's no other way to design the project, but a right-of-way deeded to the town must extend to the development's border. That allows a future ''punch-through" when the next undeveloped tract is developed and its streets are built.

The houses at the ends of the former dead ends acquire bigger yards and longer driveways in the process because the circle at the end, no longer needed for cars to turn around, becomes part of their front yards.

The neighborhood around Berkshire Street, officially known as Maple Park Estates, is being developed in phases. Cul-de-sacs, such as those at Erin Lane and Berkshire Street, have been eliminated as the area has been connected to an adjacent neighborhood that was developed mostly in the 1970s and '80s.

''You build the short streets, but eventually the short streets link into each other," Winslow explained. ''It's basically phased growth."

Barbara Lucas, manager of transportation planning for the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, said the regional agency doesn't track such practices, but it is her sense that few communities are as restrictive as Norfolk on cul-de-sacs.

Connecting neighborhoods is good growth management because of the way it spreads out traffic, provides alternate routes for emergency vehicles, and encourages people to walk or bicycle to destinations rather than drive, she said. ''It's exactly those kinds of things that make a difference."

Lucas said she once lived on a cul-de-sac. Although her house was within 1,000 yards of a garden store and a convenience store, she had to drive four times that far to reach them. ''Everywhere I went in that neighborhood, I drove."

Thomas Houston, president of Professional Services Corp. in Foxborough, is the consulting engineer to the Norfolk Planning Board. He said other towns have cul-de-sac limitations and may encourage connection of streets, but Norfolk's rules are more stringent and more consistently applied.

For instance, Norfolk limits streets with cul-de-sacs to 500 feet and no more than seven house lots. Other towns might have limits anywhere from 500 to 2,000 feet, Houston said.

Norfolk's consulting planner, Gino Carlucci of PGC Associates Inc. in Franklin, agreed with Houston. ''I've seen [regulations] in other towns that maybe encourage connections but are not as aggressive." In Franklin, he said, ''there are cul-de-sacs all over the place that could have been connected and are not."

Frenchman, the MIT professor, said cul-de-sacs do fill a need. ''Many people think they're quite terrific -- for raising kids, reducing traffic on their street, security. . . . I think this is all a matter of taste."

Local real estate agents said a cul-de-sac location continues to be a selling point for a house, but they also said homeowners can profit when a street in a new subdivision is connected to an older subdivision. The new, more expensive homes bring up the value of the homes on the older section of the street, said Cheryl Macalone of Re/Max Executive Realty in Franklin and a Norfolk resident.

Scott Colwell of Select Properties Inc. in Medfield, who is developing Maple Park Estates, said that, while he often hears from buyers about wanting to live on a cul-de-sac, he endorsed the Norfolk Planning Board's policy on interconnectedness. ''You distribute the traffic over a wider area." With dead ends, he said, ''you end up sending all of the traffic to one or two feeder streets."

Steven McClain, current chairman and Winslow's successor on the Norfolk Planning Board, said there are several tracts of land to be developed in town. When they are, they will be tied into a number of small, existing subdivisions, eliminating more cul-de-sacs. ''The board is still using the same approach" it used in the 1980s, he said.

Winslow, a third-generation Norfolk resident, is proud of the initiative the Planning Board took back then.

And it's fine with him that Fredrickson Road, the quiet street on which he lives, won't be a dead end forever. ''There's 50 acres of developable land around my property, so it's just a matter of time," he said.