Deirdre Fernandes at the Globe reports today on design plans for the final stage of the 128 add-a-lane project, which will add a fourth lane to the highway in Needham and Wellesley, replacing a temporary breakdown lane which has been in place for almost a decade. The project goals are to improve safety of interchanges and traffic flow on the aging highway and to keep the highway traffic off local roads. Significant changes have been made inrecent years to the path of the highway itself as well as to the collector-distributor roads intended to reduce conflicts and thereby prevent traffic backups. Sound barriers have been added to help abutters. Feedback from bicycle and pedestrian advocates have had some impact and are still under consideration. But proposals for a new exit at Kendrick Street and signals to partially replace a cloverleaf interchange at Route 9 are among changes causing the most consternation, particularly in Newton.
At a recent forum hosted by the Newton Needham Chamber of Commerce, state officials were confident that the new signals on Route 9 would function well, based on their simulations. Unlike full signals, they reasoned, these signals only pause traffic briefly for left turns and only for those turns with the least demand. Changes were being considered to address merging traffic from the Wellesley Office Park, but were not yet ready to be discussed. Further to the south, perhaps some good news for Needham: turn restrictions were added to the new Kendrick exits to keep traffic flowing directly to office parks rather than through streets like Greendale Avenue, and a flyover ramp will provide increased capacity and direct access onto the highway, rather than through the C-D road. A win for business development and hopefully for residents as well. But what are the consequences for Newton? Would motorists seeking to avoid congested routes like Needham Street or Route 9 use the new Kendrick exit to cut through Winchester or Dedham Streets? Would there be significant impact to regional traffic patterns for access to towns like Brookline, Watertown, Boston and Cambridge from 95/128? Not so, said the state officials, who said their models did not show any such problems. What options does Newton have if they’re wrong, besides adding infrastructure to accommodate the increase in demand?
This is written from Cape Breton so I hope it gets through.
@Adam. Thanks for posting this. This is a sleeper issue for Newton residents and I think the lack of response to your post points to this.
I’m happy to see the references to Alderman Yates in the Globe article. For the past year, he has been raising awareness of the many potential ramifications of the Add A Lane project.
I note that this will eliminate the old railroad bridge that was going to be part of the proposed trolley line extension from Newton Highlands to Needham Junction.
It’s pretty clear that this would complicate extending the proposed Upper Falls Greenway and bikepath project to Needham Juncton. Could it also complicate a future trolley project??
Bob brings up a great point. Taking down that RR bridge as part of the 128 Add-a-Lane project will effectively sever an important regional right-of-way. Once broken, that right-of-way’s value to the region plummets.
This was brought up at a recent public Add-a-Lane meeting in Needham with the Dept of Transportation. The DOT said that they would build a replacement bridge as part of the project, but that at this point no one knows what kind of bridge they want to build (bike/ped?, light rail?, automobile?, all-of-the-above?).
Since both ends of the bridge are in Needham, I think it’s mostly (but not entirely) up to Needham to lobby for a replacement bridge. So far, Needham seems to be pretty silent on the subject.
My worry is that if no replacement bridge is built before the add-a-lane project is completed, then the budget for later building the bridge will have evaporated. I really think Needham needs a bit of urgency on this matter. Figuring out a long term plan for that right-of-way will probably take many years. In the meantime though, I think Newton and Needham should get their act together to push hard to get the DOT to build some kind of replacement bridge out of the DOT’s Add-a-Lane budget.
At a bare minimum a bike/ped bridge should be built to leave the option open for eventually extending the Upper Falls Greenway into Needham. It would probably be more prudent though to build a bigger bridge that could handle both light rail and bike/ped trail to leave options open for other uses in the future.
Bob: thanks for your comment. It was so quiet, I was beginning to wonder if everyone in Newton was on vacation!
You make an excellent point about the railroad bridge. The government is making a major investment to increase highway capacity. It should make a minor investment in alternative transportation. Until recently, the footings were to remain in place, but now it appears the entire bridge will be removed. The presenter at the most recent forum said that MassDOT was “legally obligated” to restore the bridge, but that they would not do so until the use of the bridge is decided. If left to regional transit authorities, that could take decades.
While the bridge is squarely in Needham, both communities have a stake in this. Clearly, that bridge would never need to support freight trains again, but could it be rebuilt cheaply to provide a pedestrian and bicycle connection just so people could avoid the dangerous highway interchange? What sort of additional investment would be required to allow for future light rail? Better connecting the business developments on each side of the highway should be in Needham’s economic and environmental interests, whether or not a trail extends further into Needham.
Great comments above on the local impact of this highway project. I’d like to comment on the larger issue of the physical process involved in highway reconstruction.
It is an absolute sham that highway projects take so long to complete in Massachusetts. Just look at how long the 128 construction work has been going on, and how many people are inconvenienced by it daily. It only took 18 months for hard working Americans to build the Empire State Building. NASA actually designed, built, and landed Curiosity on Mars while this highway project was going on, and we apparently still have years to go before completion. I like Governor Patrick and think in general he does a very good job, but it is a failure of his administration to reign in this nonsense and deliver highway projects on a more reasonable timeline.
This add-a-lane project has been going on for YEARS (I’ve been commuting that way since 2004) and still has about 3 more years to go. As I remember it, a lot of the problem goes back before Gov. Patrick when to make the project fit into the state budget, its was only funded incrementally with year-at-a-time money, so it was broken out into 2-3 mile segments and there has never been a complete project to work on. Obviously, a lot of work has been, or nearly been finished in Canton, Norwood, Westwood, Dedham and into Needham, but until it’s ALL done, they won’t open the 4th lane, instead relying on the breakdown lane for peak loads.
Contrast that with the absolutely amazing fast-track replacement of 14 overpasses on Rt 93 in Medford last year that was accomplished over just 10 weekends! http://93fast14.dot.state.ma.us/
The project dates back to 1985(!) when the state was granted permission to use the breakdown lane for travel on a “temporary” basis. New lanes will begin to open up in stages. But this final stretch is the one that impacts us here in Newton, and it’s not likely to take another 27 years for that to happen.
@Adam and Jerry. It’s no secret that there was friction between the advocates of light rail and the Greenway proponents earlier this year and last.
There now seems to be general support for the Upper Falls Greenway as long as it doesn’t preclude the option for light rail at some future date.
We now know that there is no provision in the State’s current plan for even a new bridge foundation let alone full bridge replacement when the old railroad bridge is dismantled.
This means that an entirely new bridge would have to be constructed at some future date from some as yet to be determined funding source.
This break in the action likely means that both the rail and bicycle extensions to Needham Heights are in considerable danger of never seeing the light of day.
It might behoove both rail and bike advocates to combine forces to advocate for construction of a full replacement bridge during the add a lane construction timetable while there is still time to do it. This would have to be wide enough to carry future bicycles, pedestrian and light rail travel. Nothing has to go on it immediately.
This will take considerable effort to galvanize affected state and local support and I’m not downplaying some serious difficulties and obstacles.
Funds are likely to be available from the entire add a lane project to build this replacement.
What we need, it seems, is a specific plan for this that could win approval with the State, MBTA, Newton and Needham.
Are there any planning funds available for such an effort. Duri ng my time with the Feds, there was always planning funds available somewhere.
I’m not certain that all of this is doable, but I do feel that all our collective dreams could be swept aside if the old bridge is destroyed and nothing is put up post haste to replace it.
Bob, although the current plans do dismantle the bridge, the speaker at the forum did use the words “legally obligated” when he spoke of replacing it, so I agree that we shouldn’t let MassDOT off the hook now.
I’ve always felt that by preserving the right-of-way, the Greenway project was vital to the long-term rail plans. The worst outcome is someone dismantling the right of way. Even dismantling the bridge could encourage non-transportation uses of the corridor. Being more assertive about the right of way over that bridge, I do believe, would help the light rail project, even if it is to construct a cheap pedestrian-only bridge. Perhaps there are options to build a bridge or even just footings which could support light rail in the future. Someone at the state level ought to have a better idea what options would be available and the relative costs. Certainly, the bridge would not have to support freight as it used to.
@Adam. Thanks. Can you think of anything we could do to push this?
I suppose you could send feedback to the project manager, but the message from MassDOT is that the communities have to figure out what they want first.