The Massachusetts Department of Transportation is proposing to eliminate two ramps at the intersection of Routes 9 and 128 and replace them with vehicle-activated stop lights to allow drivers to make left turns . Do you thin this is a good idea?
There will be a Public Safety and Transportation Committee meeting about this on Wednesday March 6 starting at 7:45 p.m. The state will present its proposal and public will have a chance to comment. The meeting will be in the Aldernanic Chamber on the second flooor of City Hall.
There’s much more detail available on the proposed changes at http://www.newtonma.gov/gov/planning/current/devrev/hip/add_lane.asp. There’s also a lot not yet known.
Residents of Waban, Upper Falls, and other villages along Route 9 are very concerned. It’s not exactly clear what Problem MassDOT is trying to solve with this design and the local impacts could be significant. We have not seen good estimates or even baseline measurement for the traffic impacts on Chestnut, Quinobequin, Ellis, and other local streets if (when) backups occur.
This matter has been in front of the Aldermen before, but many questions remained unanswered.
Chris, based on what I have learned from a couple of meetings, websites, newspaper articles etc., the problem that MassDOT is trying to solve is the flow of traffic along Rt 128/95. MassDOT is not concerned about the east/west traffic along Route 9. In fact, based on the proposed configuration, they are willing to sacrifice flow on Route 9 to improve the flow on Rt 128/95.
I would like the MassDOT representative to articulate the criteria for a successful project at Wednesday’s meeting.
@Patrick – That’s our interpretation as well. Our aim is to enlarge the conversation to acknowledge the impacts to Rt 9 and the local streets. These impacts need to explicitly be included in the evaluation of any proposed change to the intersection.
Although improvement of flow on 128 is something we would all applaud,I don’t know that DOT has been able to establish that in the documents they have made public and have been used by city officials in presentations.
Many data points they reference are missing from the presentation material (Functional Design Report)and have been apparently,as long as the matter has been before the city.
If you go to the city web site and search docket number 278-11 you will see record and minutes from Public Safety,
where this has been taken up,with supporting documents attached.
I am looking forward to the Public Safety meeting on Wed. and the data that might finally be made public to help the public understand what factors caused DOT to permanently redesign the route 9 intersection.
Do I think this proposal is a good idea? Let’s see:
1) The crash data available from the DOT’s own crash portal website does not indicate a level of mishaps at the intersection that would justify a construction intervention.
2) The DOT’s proposed reconfiguration will not decrease traffic problems on Rt. 9 either. In fact it will exacerbate them:
A) Travelers entering Rt 9 from either the Wellesley Office Park exit or the Chestnut/Quinobequin on-ramp to go southbound on Rt95 will have to cross two lanes of fast moving through traffic to get into a left-turn lane governed by a traffic light. This section of the intersection experiences about 10% of the accidents that occur on Rt9 at Rt95 now and this additional stress will only increase this figure.
B) Through traffic going west on Rt. 9, in addition to enduring the weaving of the left-turners heading south on Rt 95, will be stopped by two traffic lights. The first light will stop them to allow cars going eastbound on Rt 9 to access Rt 95 north. The second light will stop them to allow the workers at Harvard Vanguard and Sun Financial to enter and exit their respective workplaces. The inevitable delays at these lights are visible to drivers heading west as they pass through the Woodward Street traffic light. These drivers will have a choice:
i) Go straight ahead and sit in the traffic.
ii) BALK and get off Rt9 at the Chestnut St. off-ramp and traverse through residential areas of Newton by way of Chestnut St. or Quinobequin Road on their way north to the Rt 16 interchange or south to the Highland Avenue interchange
C) Through traffic going east on Rt. 9 will be stopped by two traffic lights. The first light will stop them to allow the workers at Harvard Vanguard and Sun Financial to enter and exit their respective workplaces. The second light will stop them to allow cars going westbound on Rt 9 to access Rt 95 south.
D) These drivers will have no choice. They have no side-streets that parallel Rt95 on which to escape. They will wait in traffic queues. They will also endure weaving of drivers exiting Rt 95 north going east on Rt 9 and drivers exiting Rt 9 east for Ellis St./Chestnut St./or Quinobequin Rd.
Do I think this proposal is a good idea? While I believe we DO need to widen Rt 95 so that we do not ever again have to use a break-down lane for high-speed traffic, I believe that the design for the Rt 9-Rt 95 intersection should be labelled as what it is, not “Add-A-Lane”, but rather “Addled Lane”!!!!! What are they thinking?
Chris, thank you for your reply. I know you are well aware of the full problem, and I appreciate your efforts to solve this issue. We need to make sure that MasDOT publicly acknowledges that both Rt 9 and Rt 128/95 are state roads that they need to maintain. This is not just a Rt 128/95 project.
The problem with the flow of traffic on 128 at Rt 9 is that it drops from 6 lanes to 3 as traffic is entering from the Rt 9 on-ramp. Do you really need a pile of traffic engineers from MassDOT to figure out why there is a back-up issue there?
It obviously has nothing to do with the Rt 9 intersection and everything to do with the design of the 128 travel lanes.
Unfortunately, this is not a new proposal. It is now very late in the design of the add-a-lane project.
Barbara, I think that MassDOT makes a very different case regarding the ramps. To add to what Patrick said, the engineers suggest that the design of the ramps and the location and speed of cars entering and exiting the highway has a lot to do with traffic flow problems and backups on 128. The additional lane (actually two additional lanes between Highland Ave and route 9) will have a big impact, but at least if you buy in to MassDOT’s narrative, altering the cloverleaf will also have a positive impact to traffic flow on 128. The geometry of the current ramps result in slow, inefficient merges and weaving of traffic. That causes traffic jams, which hurts our economy, etc. The objective is not necessarily about reducing accidents (though I’m sure there have been many) and it’s certainly not about protecting our local streets.
Again, according to the MassDOT analysis, the eliminated ramps are the least used and the new signals will not have full cycles and therefore not result in a bottleneck. They claim there will be ample “storage” and that traffic will not back up far enough to block the on ramp to 128 south. And yes, the Wellesley Office Park entrance appears basically unchanged from the present mess in the latest 75% design plans
I share Sallee’s skepticism of MassDOT’s projections. But I feel that the problems are not limited to Waban and the Upper Falls. The sleeper issue here is the new Kendrick exit. If Route 9 remains a parking lot at peak hours, travel time from 128 north to points near Boston could be much shorter exiting at the new Kendrick exit than exiting at Route 9 or Highland Ave. I’d like to see an analysis to prove me wrong.
The entire south half of Newton could see a massive increase in traffic. MassDOT’s answers suggest this is ok, as long as Newton’s roads don’t see degradation in level of service. MassDOT suggests that potential mitigation could mean managing the traffic, not preventing it. That’s a very different response than what I heard last year at a Newton-Needham Chamber of Commerce meeting, where officials said that the goals of the project included keeping traffic off local streets. Needham seemed to accomplish this, as traffic is being diverted off Greendale, while gaining economic development opportunities that only seem to drive more traffic to Newton. Why is Newton getting the short end of the stick?
@Adam, you’re correct to point out the issues regarding Kendrick. There is both an opportunity and a risk here. The opportunity is in helping to make Wells Avenue more economically productive. The risk is to add to the behavior of using the full network of local Newton Streets as a bypass for an overloaded regional highway network.
Alderman Kalis and others have been very aware and vocal on the topic of the Kendrick effects. He has been tied into our discussions on Rt 9 as well as – as you note – it’s all part of the same discussion.
As it has been explained to me, Newton has to this point been somewhat under notified because of the quirks of where Rt 128 lies. Under the regs, MassDOT is encourages to specifically work with the communities through which the right-of-way runs. They have been “extending the courtesy” of discussion to us through this period, but Newton has not been a prime focus.
Maybe a dumb question, but isn’t RTE 9 a state road, and if so don’t they have an obligation to take the issues affecting it just as much as with 128?
@Chris, unless there are plans to add massive additional to Wells Ave, the way Needham plans to do with its parcels, I don’t see much opportunity for Newton. The cons for Newton far outweigh the pros, and you summarize the cons well. It must be clear that mitigation must restrict, not accommodate additional traffic.
The process seems to leave little leverage for our city, only a fraction of a mile from the highway. I have to wonder, where is our state delegation on the Kendrick issue and others involving MassDOT?
@Dan, regarding route 9, I think the fact is that Woodward is and will continue to be the bottleneck. The Route 9 study Rep Balser funded years ago made that very clear.
@Adam: I disagree that Wellesley Office Park and the Quinobequin on-ramp traffic will remain unchanged. Cars entering Rt 9 from those points whose drivers wish to go south on Rt95 will, under DOT’s proposal, be forced to cross two lanes of fast moving traffic to get to the left turn lanes to await the green light of the new traffic signal. Westbound through traffic on Rt 9 and those going west on Rt 9 to northbound 95 will now be dodging those south bound drivers. That is clearly a worse condition than this awkward and dangerous section of the intersection already bears.
@Sallee: excellent point. I only meant that the design does not address the office park merge which requires a police detail at peak hours. Indeed, the new design may make it worse.
Reminder to all Route 9 drivers and to all who live near the Rt 9 and 128 intersection: Come to the Public Safety andTransportation Meeting tonight at 7:45pm in the second floor Aldermanic Chambers at City Hall to hear DOT’s presentation of its Rts 9-128 intersection design proposal. The repercussions for Newton may well ripple down to your street or cause you to flee through Newton to avoid Route 9. This is big. You should hear what DOT has to say and think about it