128 Widening

As a resident of Concord, I can say with confidence that grade seperation will never occur. However, I would say that once Crosby's Corner and the rotary are fixed up, the road will flow much smoother. The Sudbury Road intersection is not a huge deal since a large portion of the westbound traffic gets off at Fairhaven road which is a pain free exit... Also, the light at Emerson hospital is helpful for flexibility with emergency vehicles and builiding a limited access ramp there would likely entail costly environmental work due to the proximity of the Sudbury River. The only plausible road that I could see a ramp being built at is the Main St. light. However, if I had to guess, much of the traffic there will be alleviated with the rotary reconstruction. Does anyone know if the plans at the rotary include a ramp being built at the Elm St. merge near Papa Razzi?
 
bch2014 said:
As a resident of Concord, I can say with confidence that grade seperation will never occur. However, I would say that once Crosby's Corner and the rotary are fixed up, the road will flow much smoother. The Sudbury Road intersection is not a huge deal since a large portion of the westbound traffic gets off at Fairhaven road which is a pain free exit... Also, the light at Emerson hospital is helpful for flexibility with emergency vehicles and builiding a limited access ramp there would likely entail costly environmental work due to the proximity of the Sudbury River. The only plausible road that I could see a ramp being built at is the Main St. light. However, if I had to guess, much of the traffic there will be alleviated with the rotary reconstruction. Does anyone know if the plans at the rotary include a ramp being built at the Elm St. merge near Papa Razzi?
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No. Elm will get a heavily-redesigned intersection and upgraded ped access and ped separation to compensate for the higher-speed traffic, but because of the river crossing and abutters they're pinned onto the same bridge which prevents a full interchange.

Main St./62, yes, there'll probably be support for an underpass and SPUI-type compact interchange there. But on the same road footprint.
 
bch2014 said:
As a resident of Concord, I can say with confidence that grade seperation will never occur. However, I would say that once Crosby's Corner and the rotary are fixed up, the road will flow much smoother. The Sudbury Road intersection is not a huge deal since a large portion of the westbound traffic gets off at Fairhaven road which is a pain free exit... Also, the light at Emerson hospital is helpful for flexibility with emergency vehicles and builiding a limited access ramp there would likely entail costly environmental work due to the proximity of the Sudbury River. The only plausible road that I could see a ramp being built at is the Main St. light. However, if I had to guess, much of the traffic there will be alleviated with the rotary reconstruction. Does anyone know if the plans at the rotary include a ramp being built at the Elm St. merge near Papa Razzi?
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Once those two bottlenecks are improved, the issues at the remaining non-grade separated intersections will worsen. Just like fixing the central artery, there will be some induced demand that previously took local roads and the bottleneck will move somewhere else. In the case of the central artery, the problems moved to the braintree split and I-93/I-95 in Woburn.

Even if the entire portion were upgraded to expressway standards it'd still just shift congestion elsewhere-- like onto 128-- but that's much better than expressway traffic being diverted onto local roads which happens far too often throughout MA.
 
I could be totally talking out of my ass (and probably am LOL), but the attitude in Concord really does not ooze "avoidance" of route 2. I live on one of the busier roads in town (Sudbury Road), and there is not a markeable increase in traffic during rush hour. If anything, our worst back-ups and traffic occur when the grade crossing gates at the depot go down for the commuter rail.
 
Does anyone know the whole point of the work they are doing on 95 in Woburn and Burlington. Besides being painfully slow it seems that its all in the name of making the median between the two sides of the highway smaller. Are they trying to use the bigger shoulder for traffic or something?
 
Yes. It's part of the "add-a-lane" project. They're widening Rte 128 (I-95 and parts of I-93) by adding a lane in each direction (mostly in the median). Southern limit is where 128 meets Rt 24. Can't remember what the northern limit is.
 
This stretch of 128 is now ridiculously smooth too because they redid the whole roadway. It was way overdue. It's so smooth that you'd never guess you were on 128!
 
Looks like they're making some nice improvements to the 93/95 split in Canton. It's going to 5 or 6 lanes wide on the south bound side heading into the sharp turn onto 95 south and it will be 5 lanes heading north from 95 onto 93. And they've added in some new lighting in that area as well.

I look forward to one day when they redo that entire intersection with flyover ramps.

I know this is 2 years old, but here is a presentation from back in 2010. Has some nice diagrams and plans for options.
 
AmericanFolkLegend said:
Yes. It's part of the "add-a-lane" project. They're widening Rte 128 (I-95 and parts of I-93) by adding a lane in each direction (mostly in the median). Southern limit is where 128 meets Rt 24. Can't remember what the northern limit is.
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What's going on in Burlington/Woburn is different from the add-a-lane project. Add a lane is from Route 9 in Wellesley to Route 24. The stuff north of there is normal maintenance, resurfacing and reconstruction, safety improvements, signage/lighting improvements, fiber and ITS, that sort of thing.
 
Has anyone driven on 95/128 south? They have opened up the 4th travel lane from Dedham to the 95/93 interchange.

http://www.mhd.state.ma.us/downloads/I_95add_lane/Kendrick_Highland.pdf

Here's the PDF of the planes for the Kendrick Street/Highland Ave area. Looks like that area is in for some big and nice improvements to help the traffic flow coming/going from that area, especially during rush hour.
 
Yes - drove on it a few times over the past week. It is VERY nice right now.

Can't help but think, though, that the fourth lane should be an open HOV lane like San Francisco has: HOV-only during rush hours but otherwise open to all traffic.
 
And they're still adding lanes on the outside shoulder to help the I-95 to I-93 transition. Just need to install a couple more retaining walls the deal with the grade changes.
 
I think the 93/95/128 interchange in Canton is a higher priority project than the Woburn cloverleaf.

But that's just me.
 
Commuting Boston Student said:
I think the 93/95/128 interchange in Canton is a higher priority project than the Woburn cloverleaf.

But that's just me.
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How can you even say that? There's no weaving. It shouldn't be very accident prone, at least not compared to the cloverleaf in Woburn.
 
BostonUrbEx said:
How can you even say that? There's no weaving. It shouldn't be very accident prone, at least not compared to the cloverleaf in Woburn.
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I agree, Woburn is a collosal nightmare, and should be the undisputed top priority. Once the full project is completed on the lower end of 128, a lot of pressure should be relieved from that interchange.
 
BostonUrbEx said:
How can you even say that? There's no weaving. It shouldn't be very accident prone, at least not compared to the cloverleaf in Woburn.
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There's no weaving, true, but the interchange itself is a malformed partial cloverleaf that has the entirety of I-95's traffic being shoved through the same kind of ramps that the Woburn interchange has. Even if they were doing the job they were meant for, as Woburn's ramps are, they are inadequate - and they're certainly inadequate for carrying an entire major interstate corridor's worth of traffic. There's zero risk of accidents caused by weaving, but it's a high-risk clusterfuck just the same.

I should also point out, for the record - unlike in Woburn where there's a non-trivial amount of development around the problem area that could be impacted (up to and including requiring takeovers), there's nearly zero development in the vicinity of the Canton interchange and MassDOT/the state owns all of the land it needs to solve the problem already anyway.
 
Can it be done without infringing on parkland? (Blue Hills reservation)
 
Ron Newman said:
Can it be done without infringing on parkland? (Blue Hills reservation)
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Yes.

As I said - we own all the land. A lot of it has actually been polluted already, in a sense - if you look at the satellite view over the area in question, you can see that remnants of the rest of the interchange still survive. I believe that the reservation lines were actually drawn around the footprint of the would-be intersection's remnants.

(In fact, I imagine whatever land isn't eaten up by the new interchange would be allocated to the Blue Hills reservation, resulting in a gain of total parkland.)
 
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