Our city government has been aware of Route 128-Route 9 Add-A-Lane project since 1999. The Public Safety and Transportation Committee of the Board of Aldermen has met nine times to discuss the project’s impact on Newton, the latest meeting being on March 6, 2013.
One of those committee meetings was advertised as a public meeting where Newton residents were encouraged to relay concerns. The announcement of that meeting was a small notice in the Newton TAB. The full Board of Aldermen has never held a hearing on this issue. The mayor’s office has been eerily silent about the whole project.
A few Newton aldermen attended a Needham Public Hearing held in Needham with DOT officials over a year ago. Although the Add-A-Lane Project wriggles along Newton’s western border and the bridges that are within the scope of the project lead traffic directly into Newton, this meeting was not intended for the Newton public, but for the Needham and Wellesley public because the project is legally within their borders and not inside Newton. At that meeting in Needham, concerns were raised about the Kendrick Street bridge and the impact of traffic on Newton’s southernmost streets (Nahanton, Winchester, Dedham, Parker Streets). Concerns about bicycle lanes and pedestrian access were also raised. There was absent anyone to champion the probable impact of the project terminus, the proposed redesign of the Route 9 Intersection with Route 128.
The aldermen on the PS and T committee submitted questions to the MA DOT well over a year ago and were satisfied waiting a year for responses that were incomplete and non-compelling.
Enter the residents of Waban. Drawn to awareness of the poor concept of changing a working cloverleaf intersection to one that would have two traffic lights and a two-leaf cloverleaf configuration with backup leading to drivers leaving Route 9 for passage on neighborhood streets, I’m part of a group of residents who began a discussion that continues today.
We have asked for meetings with the Mayor (to no avail). We have submitted questions and organized speakers at the March P S and T committee hearing. We are members of the fledgling organization hoping to become the Waban Area Council. And we are fast learning the barrier they must surmount to stimulate interest and accomplish change.
At the last Waban Area Council meeting on March 28, 2013, Newton’s Director of Transportation, William Paille, spoke of his sense that the Add-A-Lane Project was a “done deal” and that the state is going to carry out their construction as planned. There has been no evaluation of the DOT proposal by the City’s professionals. Half of the Functional Design Report was never seen by the Aldermen on the PS and T Committee and we have had to challenge the DOT to produce missing pages as well as the Environmental Impact Statement regarding the intersection that no government official in Newton could locate. One wonders whether they ever read it! The documents have only very recently (3/28/13) been made available.
Paille represented that he and the one person who works with him do not have the resources to evaluate the project and leave that up to the DOT consultants to carry out. This measure seems to be devoid of a true Newton perspective in this conversation.
Leaders who are also looking to establish the Waban Area Council still wish to pursue a double track: 1)to make certain that vehicle counts are completed before construction begins and as well as at a date to be determined after construction and to create a Memorandum of Understanding between the City and the DOT to carry out these vehicle traffic studies; and 2) to continue to pursue support from State and Congressional legislators as well as to engage Newton representatives to regional planning boards (e.g., the Metropolitan Area Planning Council and the Boston Metropolitan Planning Organization).
I am very disappointed that our City leaders have not shouted out their concerns about this project to protect the neighborhoods that will be impacted by this change. The lack of concerned action by our City government makes me wonder if suggesting an airplane runway down Walnut Street would arouse any distress at City Hall!
Route 9 has been treated like Cinderella in the fairy tale. She is still waiting for her Prince Charming.
I wouldn’t lose much sleep over this. At the pace the state advances highway projects, they’ll finish this about the time our grandchildren are driving flying cars like the Jetson’s.
@Mike – Yes, DOT projects do tend to proceed slowly. This one has been in progress for a few years and the DOT has been slowly and steadily working their way up the highway from Randolph. They’ve already started work at the southern end of Needham. Even with delays, etc, the construction on the Rt9/Rt128 is not that far off – one-two years maybe?
I agree that this proposal will increase congestion on Rt. 9 and surrounding roads, and will do little to alleviate accident rates on 128/95.
@Mike: It could even be sooner. The DOT will soon (maybe by the end of this year)be sending the design out for bids. The contractor could decide to begin the last leg at the north end of the project, even if DOT requests that it be constructed south to north! We are trying to get DOT to segment the project (separate the 9-128 intersection from the rest of the project) and send the southern portion of the last leg out for bid while it holds the Rt 9-128 part for further study. We ideally would like a study of the entire Rt 9 corridor through Newton and a better design within that picture to draw commuters easily through the city while allowing for easy access for residents to multiple locations within Newton. I am losing sleep over it. It is happening fast! If we don’t speak now, we will lose the chance forever! Come to our Waban Area Council meetings for details (next meeting is Thursday, April 25, at Waban Library at 7:45pm). Or go to our Facebook Page for more details. Or ask me here!
Agree it will be soon. Also, the window of opportunity to do something about the design, the mitigation, or both is likely closing. The design will be frozen soon, so now is the community’s opportunity to ask questions and work to make this right.
My neighborhood is off of Route 9, and I fear the traffic. It is clear that the state is “solving” the 128 issue, without community input from the residents of Route 9/Waban. I hope that we can convince the state to look at the traffic via the BIG picture.
True, the Kendrick side of the issue, potentially impacting a large area of the city, has had some Aldermen champions of late, but just as little response from the state. Both concerns have a common source: route 9 congestion.
I don’t think it’s fair to say the Aldermen were satisfied with their interactions with MassDOT. Powerless seems like a better description. If the city was going to have any leverage at all, it would have been a decade ago. See this 2003 CTPS report, including the sign in sheets from 2001 traffic impact meetings attended by several Newton officials and Aldermen past, present and future, and a relatively weak written response (Appendix A) from the city which asked for clarification, but did not voice objections. Needham lobbied effectively for economic development while protecting its neighborhoods. The traffic projections (Appendix D) show virtually no impact on Newton, without any indication of methodology or whether new traffic patterns were even considered. A stronger letter was sent from the group working on Newton’s comprehensive plan. I’m wondering if there’s any “institutional memory” of what transpired. Where was the outrage? Does anyone remember?
At this point, I think we rely mostly on our state delegation for assistance, and we need to ask ourselves, what action should we demand. So far, the city has asked for funding for traffic signals, which would seem to only accommodate additional traffic. We need to think about how we can protect our city, and we need to think bigger. How can we keep traffic off our local streets? What would it take to fix route 9?
@ Adam: As I understand it, the Route 9 interchange redesign was to be temporary. The proposed redesign became a permanent part of the Add-A-Lane plan sometime in 2011. We could hardly have howled about it ten years ago! (Bridge V was at 25% design on June 13, 2011: cf. MA DOT Notice of Project Change EEA#5072, dated June, 2011). I know that you have written that Exit 20 (Route 9’s intersection with 128) will bear less negative impact than Kendrick Street on Newton’s neighborhoods, but I think your frustration with DOT’s responses has fogged your vision. All of Newton will be affected. Your neighborhood AND mine. Your streets AND mine. Your short-cuts AND mine. I am horrified that we have not seen a savior rise to help us. Neither our Aldermen nor our Mayor. Powerless, my eye! If they realized the detriment to commuter and Newton traffic about to slam Route 9, they would be calling Ruth Balser, Cindy Creem, Deval Patrick, Elizabeth Warren and Joe Kennedy to shout “ouch” and “cut it out”. There would be press beyond Village 14 and the Tab and even Metro West. We would be featured in the BOSTON Globe and on BOSTON’s TV stations. Our Mayor would be shown scolding Governor Patrick for imposing his economic development transportation plan burden on Newton with no obvious economic gain for Newton (as opposed to economic gains for Wellesley and Needham). Has some backroom deal been made somewhere? If not, how can we light the fire under our lawmakers to get them to separate the Rt 9-128 bridge from the rest of the project and look at the Route 9 corridor as a SYSTEM to be approached with an eye to reasonable economic development that PROTECTS Newton’s neighborhoods and keeps Newton, the Garden City, our sobriquet, rather than our epitaph.
Maybe it was the first line of the post that threw me… “Our city government has been aware of Route 128-Route 9 Add-A-Lane project since 1999.” I assume that to mean the project was on the drawing board for a several years prior. So we’re approaching 20 years and still counting. I don’t mean to belittle anyone’s concerns about traffic. I just continue to be amazed at how dysfunctional state government is. But given that we are nearly two decades in, is this really the time to be raising objections?
@Mike: Yes, this is definitely the time to raise objections!!!!! How many of us plain old citizens could have foreseen the project’s impacts on Newton 20 years ago? That’s when our leaders should have been doing comething about it! Studying it. Being involved in the regional planning for it. Advocating loudly and successfully for their residents, as the leaders did in Needham. As far as the 9-128 intersection is concerned, the project, well advertised as a grand improvement to Rte 128, was focused closely on just that, 128. Nobody worried about rt 9 since that was to be left unchanged when the project was completed. Then somebody looked at the bridge and somehow determined that it needed to be replaced (We still have no answer as to what standard makes the bridge NEED to be replaced.) And safety. DOT says safety is their other reason to change the intersection. But, when asked what accident numbers trigger a rebuilding intervention, they do not offer the information as to what that standard is. I have been told by a traffic engineer that 600 accidents in ten years (including 2 fatalities) is not large enough a number to trigger this change. That is the number of accidents near that intersection in a ten year period. Maybe I sound cold-hearted. But consider that the entrance to Rt 9 from the Quinobequin on-ramp and Wellesley Office Park will bear much more of a safety risk with the proposed change than the weaving on Rt 128 does now! To change this intersection DOT must show that they will not transfer the safety risk from rt 128 to rt 9 and they have not done so. Concerned residents in Newton would be happy to work with them to find a different design, one that is reasonable and safe. DOT’s waving their hands and saying that this design is the only workable one is unfair to all. Let them build from Needham to the northern end of the project, separate from the intersection at rt 9. Let us work together to find a better solution with DOT (while DOT wears side mirrors instead of blinders finely focused on rt 128), and look at Rt 9’s problems through Newton as a whole and SOLVE them to everyone’s betterment!
The state doesn’t care about Newton traffic congestion nearly as much as it cares about getting ALL of the state’s commuters to and from work. The intersection of 128S and rt.9 is the biggest choke point in the entire state apart from 93S. It backs up every single day without exception. This project isn’t about mitigating risk, it’s about alleviating congestion. Newton’s terrible and selfish road designs already back up the Pike for miles in the afternoon…it’s time you got over yourselves.
Sebastian, agreed on the state’s goals. Could you please elaborate on how Newton’s road designs are to blame, citing examples, and explaining how they are selfish?