Our friend Nathan has discovered a $172 million project on the books to widen the Massachusetts Turnpike bridge over the Charles between Newton and Weston and sections both east and west of the bridge. Meanwhile, our Mayor and state delegation are practically begging for funding to build barely adequate stations to make a more attractive rail alternative to single-occupancy-vehicle travel into Boston and to and from the suburbs. Auburndale Station is less than a mile from the bridge.
Sure, we’re almost certain to learn that the bridge project itself is legitimately necessary to address crumbling infrastructure and that the cost to widen is only a small part of the budget. And sure, we’re almost certain to learn that it isn’t a choice between one or the other, that bridge-widening money is not available for station building, even if the state decides not to widen.
But, the fact that there is money for adding highway capacity and not for transit improvements is galling. The seas are rising.
This is the project map.
Looks confusing.
This appears to be the heart of the project, replacement of the bridge(s) over 128 and the Charles. The picture to the right is the current bridge.
The bridge expands from three lanes in each direction to four. Westbound (top) currently has two through lanes and an exit-only for traffic to 128. It will get three through lanes and an exit-only lane to 128.
To the east, the project plan calls for an increase from three lanes to four lanes to feed into (westbound) or accept (eastbound) the bridge’s four lanes. Again, the current roadway is to the right.
Same to the west. What is currently three lanes in each direction becomes four, for a bit. Westbound, one of the lanes is the continuation of the exit-only lane to the actual exit. The two through lanes become three. It’s hard to do a side-by-side comparison since the latest Google Map aerial view predates the toll plaza coming down.
So, the simple way to understand the highway widening appears to be that MassDOT wants to add capacity to the bridge as part of a necessary (maybe?) bridge replacement and there will be some corresponding highway widening to the east and west of the bridge.
The question is why? Why does it need to be easier to drive this section of the Turnpike? The short answer is that it shouldn’t. There is no reason to add highway capacity. More capacity just invites more people to drive. (It’s called induced demand, and it’s a thing.)
MassDOT should be doing everything in its powers to reduce automobile use.
We’ve got the question out to MassDOT. I’ll post again when I’ve heard back.
I expect the answer is that the increased capacity on 128 because of the add-a-lane project necessitates increasing the capacity of this interchange. That would be a crappy answer. Add-a-lane was a terrible idea. The cancer of add-a-lane should not spread to the Turnpike.
Spend the money on transit, instead.
Not to mention that if they’re going to be replacing bridges at this interchange they should undo the spaghetti mess of ramps & feeders left-over from the tolls, and use the freed-up land to do some transit-oriented development. Riverside is *right there* as are the commuter rail tracks. It would be game-changing to do a combined green / CR station here with a lot of park-and-ride capacity and on-site housing.
And then there’s this: Koch brothers bankrolling campaigns to kill public transit projects: https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2018/06/25/koch-brothers-set-their-sites-transportation/JynvbzhyBpibkhdyU101rO/story.html
Two quick notes from a transportation planner:
– MassDOT spends very little on widening highways for capacity purposes. These bridges are in fair-to-poor condition and are at the end of their lifespan. While this doesn’t make them immediately unsafe, it means they cost a lot for MassDOT to maintain, so replacement projects can be money savers in the long term. Short lane additions like this are rarely meant to improve capacity – they reduce merging conflicts and improve safety (incidentally, the 128 Add-a-Lane was meant to do the same by eliminating breakdown lane travel – neither project was meant to add capacity).
– The MBTA presented on improvements to Auburndale, Newtonville, and West Newton stations last month, with an estimated cost of $46M. Following the false start with Auburndale last year, all three stations are being advanced to 100% design. https://cdn.mbta.com/sites/default/files/fmcb-meeting-docs/2018/may/2018-05-07-fmcb-commuter-rail-cip-winchester-newton.pdf
Has the MBTA has learned nothing from the Auburndale upgrade debacle? I can’t believe they are *still* advocating a single side platform as the preferred approach for the three Newton stations… What a disaster! This option guarantees Newton will never have significant improvements in commuter train service for a lifetime.
https://commonwealthmagazine.org/transportation/t-is-rebuilding-station-in-worst-possible-way/
C’mon, who is seriously going to push to spend tens of millions of dollars on making commute better for residents of an afluent suburb…. when so many poorer communities are without service.
Political suicide! This is what we voted for, dont be surprised
@Ben Bayes: I saw a followup from a TransitMatters board member (probably on ArchBoston; sorry I can’t dig it up right now) stating that they got a clarification from MassDOT: that the designs for the single-sided accessible high-level platforms on the north-side track would not preclude accessible platforms on the south-side track in future as a Phase 2. And that building a new platform on the opposite side from the existing crap stations would not necessarily require closing the existing stations during construction, as would be needed for a center platform.
My hope is that Newton could extract the funds for one or more south-side high platforms from developments along the Washington St. corridor, and convince MBTA to create some useful service/schedules to put them to good use outside of peak commute hours.
It is folly to oppose trivial highway improvements in the name of CARS AND DRIVERS ARE EEEEEVILLLLL! as Sean seems to think. Sorry, but that horse left the barn 60-70 years ago. Creating traffic jams will not make people take public transit that either doesn’t exist or doesn’t fulfill their needs. It just hurts the economy and everyone who needs to get through it.
The Commonwealth needs a balanced transportation policy. Right now it is oriented towards one thing only, keeping the fuel tax as low as possible (well below other states) so that big fat SUVs don’t pay more at the pump. Stupid plan, but favored by suburban lawmakers whose constituents need to drive a lot and have been taken in by the gas-guzzling luxury-truck fad. The first thing that needs to happen is to raise that tax, with the money divided between highway/bridge maintenance and mass transit, which of course lowers demand for (and thus cost of) roads.
Commuter rail exists for a narrow purpose, to get 9-5 workers to and from downtown Boston. It’s very nice for that, if you live by a station or can get a parking space. It is useless for pretty much anything else. Rapid transit(light rail) is much more flexible, but again only useful where it exists, and the MBTA network is primarily based on century-old commuting-to-Boston patterns. No money to expand, since it isn’t profitable and the GGC thinks the gas tax has to be kept low.
The rail system could be upgraded to have two-sided stations and frequent DMUs (“Budd cars”) to provide RT-like service, but doing so with wheelchair access is much harder than without. Yes, I’ll be un-PC here: The ADA does cause collateral damage with its absolute mandates. We don’t get inaccessible stations, we get no stations.
And of course there’s never enough parking at stations anyway. So we have developers who want to raise the percentage of residents within walking distance of a station by adding residents, not by making it easier to get to a station. Lie with statistics.