Today, like many other days, I just had a close call with another driver at a very strange intersection a few blocks from my house. It’s actually a pair of interlocking intersections. Chestnut Street passes under Route 9 and on each side of the underpass there is an intersection with a 3-way stop sign.
Before moving here I didn’t know that a 3-way stop sign intersection was a thing. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered it before. Maybe its not a thing. Maybe it’s a unique creation invented just for our benefit, for the unusual characteristics of this crossroads. Despite the fact that I hate this intersection, I do appreciate the logic of it, and can see how it came to be.
The problem with a four way stop is that the intersections on opposite sides of the underpass are too close together. If there were a 4 way stop, at busy times the waiting cars at each intersection would back up into the opposite intersection. If they were both 2 way stop signs then the people waiting to turn off Chestnut would back up into the opposite intersection.
The three way stop sign solves those problems nicely, works exactly as intended and the two intersections never (or rarely) interfere with each other. There’s just one very big problem. The driving public has no idea what a 3 way stop intersection is.
Every day I drive under route 9 and turn left in front of the cars waiting at the stop sign. My path has the right-of-way – i.e. no stop sign. About once every 5 or 10 times through that intersection, the person waiting at the Stop sign will suddenly step on the gas just as I make the turn in front of them. Inevitably, the person in the other car is yelling and gesturing, certain that they are in the right, and that I’m just a jerk who ran a stop sign and nearly killed them.
Last year, my wife lost her car to that intersection. She was mostly fine. Her car most definitely was not.
So here’s my crowd-sourcing question: Have you ever encountered 3 way stop signs before? If so where?
Just how unique is Chestnut St in Upper Falls? Are we really special or only just a little bit?
p.s. The photo above shows a weird artifact from Google Earth that I’ve never seen or noticed before. The Rt 9 bridge over Chestnut st in the Google Earth image looks extremely depressed, as if Route 9 dips steeply down and then back up as it crosses Chestnut St. In the real world it does no such thing.
I almost saw a 3 vehicle crash including a vespa type vehicle in front of me a couple days ago at this intersection because someone coming up the ramp didn’t know it wasn’t 4 way stop
That intersection is truly terrible.
Jerry, those little yellow signs under the stop sign are part of a federal standard, not a local invention, so I guess it’s legit. That’s how drivers are supposed to know when they don’t have the right of way. Expecting MA drivers to read and understand signs may be the core of the problem.
I’ve been going through that intersection for several decades, and I still get scared each time. I just go really slowly, even when I have the right of way.
I live in that neighborhood and it is truly awful. Leaving route 9 westbound to make a left onto Chestnut is one of the scariest things I do daily. And now with more vehicles using that off ramp due to the new Wellesley Office Park, I feel it has gotten worse (I didn’t know that was possible). The only worse intersection is the Circle of Death.
I wish I had ideas of how to improve the ramps and Chestnut Street, because so many vehicles use that section of road, but I have no idea.
When we first moved here there were no stop signs at all on Chestnut at that intersection, then we got the four-way stop, and now it’s the confusing three-way configuration. When teaching my kids to drive I have told them to assume that no one knows what they are doing at that spot. Just yesterday I saw a harrowing situation with a pedestrian stuck in the road trying to cross Chestnut on the north side, with drivers traveling from the south along Chestnut paying no attention to the crosswalk.
The same set-up at the neighboring Rt. 9/Chestnut/Quinobequin/Ellis St. intersection just to the west is equally bad. It has gotten worse since the Rt. 9/128 reconfiguration has cars coming from the west making a speedy U-turn under Rt. 9 in the morning to get into the Wellesley office park. Wellesley has green-lighted a mixed-use redevelopment at the office park that could add up to 600 units of housing and a hotel in the coming years. Newton has got to be part of the conversation about traffic mitigation and road redesign there, as the more intense use will only exacerbate the problems with these two intersections.
If anyone has better ideas for this intersection (indeed, almost anything will be better), they should petition the traffic council to change it, or at least write to the council members.
“Have you ever encountered 3 way stop signs before? If so where?”
Not exactly, but there was a rather similar situation where Dedham and Walnut Streets meet in front of Countryside school: two stop signs in a 3-way intersection. This could lead to people incorrectly assuming that oncoming traffic is going to stop. It was changed to an all-way stop at some point following a petition from neighborhood residents.
There is a 3-way stop at Park and Vernon near Bigelow Middle School. Drivers heading south on Park cannot continue straight sue to the one-way so must turn. I always found it strange- and a stop sign there wouldn’t hurt – but it’s a far less dangerous intersection than Chestnut and 9, which does confound me. I have no idea what the best solution for that one is due to the spacing of the lanes under the bridge.
I’d think this is a situation where a pair of lights that are synced would be the best solution. At low traffic times, they could be triggered only when a car is waiting on one of the spots crossing Chestnut.
I can shed some light on this intersection (though I can’t and won’t speak for the City, so ask them for details). Transportation has been looking at possible improvements for more than a year. It’s complicated because Route 9, the overpass, and I believe the exit ramps are under MassDOT control, though there’s some ambiguity where the lines are.
The city and state need to coordinate since changes in traffic control on Chestnut St could affect the ramp traffic. However, dealing with road below the overpass isn’t necessarily the highest priority for MassDOT since it isn’t under their jurisdiction. It’s a strange corner case (literally).
On top of all that, the best solution isn’t completely obvious. Jerry’s intuition about a four way stop not being idea might be right. On the other hand, if many drivers treat the current intersection like a four way anyway, then maybe we’re just making the de facto conditions on the ground a little safer. A four-way is certainly easier to trial than new signals (which would also be somewhat unusual and would need to be closely adjusted).
I know work on this area is continuing as part of improvements to Chestnut Street.
And Newtoner, this is exactly the kind of situation that isn’t good for Traffic Council.
Traffic Council starts from an implementation of a solution (e.g., someone petitions for a stop sign) and possibly works backwards toward the problem. In this case, it’s much better to work forward from the problem towards the most effective solution, whatever that may be. Traffic Council has leverage, but at the wrong end of the stick.
Traffic Council also doesn’t have a budget to do anything. All they can do is change the ordinance to add or remove parking and add or remove a stop sign. They can’t purchase a traffic signal. They can’t install or even formally recommend traffic calming, since they have no control of that.
Traffic Council is a peculiar and unique Newton institution. Its strength is that it allows citizens to get direct action on a request through a fairly transparent process. Its weakness is that it tends to provide, at best, isolated solutions to individual problems. It also requires citizens to become mini traffic engineers, identifying solutions themselves.
Newton needs transparent AND responsive AND effective AND timely mechanisms to improve our streets and streetscapes. It would be great if we could bridge Traffic Council’s strengths and weaknesses to create such a mechanism.
@Mike Halle – It’s good to know that the problems with these odd-ball intersections are already on the city/state’s radar. Thanks
When we moved here, just to the north of that intersection, it was uncontrolled. As parents of small children (then), we were concerned at the speed of traffic in front of our Chestnut Street home, and investigated ways to control for that all along the street. This intersection had more than 10 major crashes a year—well over the limit for action.
The 3-way stop signs reduced the number of annual crashes here significantly, but Mike is right—the complications with road ownership are a major headache when suggesting solutions.
An interesting bit of trivia—our Upper Falls neighbors had been used to blowing through this crossing (downhill and north on Chestnut, stop signs had been only on the offramps), and continued for some time after the signs were installed. We learned to always, always, look before entering the intersection.
BTW, road ownership is not just a problem for traffic control, but also for litter cleanup, streetlight replacement, broken sidewalks etc. MassDOT doesn’t have anything like our 311 system, and good luck getting them to do anything.
@Andreae Downs –
Yeah, I wouldn’t trust those Upper Falls folks as far as I could throw them. All the radio waves from those towers makes them a little nuts. 😉
On the 9-23-19 post about the latest community meeting on the Newton Whatever Center, this breakdown of the most dangerous intersections in Newton was linked in a comment by Cedar Pruitt showing the most accident prone to be an intersection at Albemarle Park.
I wanted to include it in this discussion.
A road that now ends at a park, a reversal of a one-way street, an “avenue” that has the same name as a close by “street” and all of the other roads and intersections around Cabot School have confused Google Maps and Waze.
I generally use google maps when I’m either going or coming home from a place I have never been before. When I used it recently to come home, before I noticed, it had me driving around in circles – so of course I turned it off and notified google maps.
My grandson drove up from CT and Waze had him run into Cabot Park.
Uber and Lyft and delivery drivers end up pulled over somewhere close by while they get in touch to find out where to go.
Luckily the roads are so narrow and the drivers are going so slow and are so timid about how to get where they want to go, these haven’t proven to be dangerous – at least that I know about. I hope that continues because there are cars going the wrong way, which used to be the right way, on a regular basis on Bridges Avenue.
Jerry, hat tip to you. I brought this intersection up at a meeting when Chestnut Street was discussed because I believe you had mentioned it some time ago on V14.
Everyone from the city agreed it was a non-standard and challenging intersection worth examining further.
We need better forums to bring these kinds of “on the ground” observations forward at a level below formal action but above clenched fists and cursing at the sky.
Mike, are you able to share what other improvements are planned for Chestnut? To date it seems as though there has been a lot of work replacing nearly every piece of sidewalk from Rt9 to Elliot but very little road work and no road work anywhere else on Chestnut.
For a road classified as a Major Arterial the only decent section is on the West Newton hill the rest is really bad.
At least they repainted the yellow lines so people know the “second” part of the exit ramp leading to Chestnut is two way. Can’t tell you how many cars I saw go up the left side (ie wrong way) before that.
@ Meredith,
Doesn’t she have the solution here?
Lights!
Blueprintbill, lights are expensive, and this is a complicated intersection that would need a lot of signal heads.
You’d probably want to study it carefully before committing, and possibly trial simpler solutions first.
… and as Kathy Winters pointed out there is a nearly identical pair of intersections, with nearly identical issues a block away at Quinnobequin Rd.
Marti, I agree that Albemarle’s traffic / transportation system is a major safety problem that needs to be addressed, will cost a lot of money, and will have no easy answers. Newton put in a grant proposal to the state under the Safe Routes to School program to start looking at it. We need to do more.
But let’s not bring it into this thread. If it’s important, let’s break it out.
Newton all too often conflates important but distinct problems, yielding unsolvable civic hairballs bound together by strands of angst and outrage.
I drive by that intersection very often, and just to be save I always assume the other drivers may not know about the 3-way stop.
Never seen an accident, just close calls.
I guess it is the best configuration they could figure out. The traffic actually flows pretty well at all times.