128 Widening

Does this state have an issue with using flyover ramps and stacked interchanges?

I am not saying we need to have massive interchanges like the High Five down in Dallas, but for major interchanges, having a setup that makes sense and offers the smoothest transitions for drivers is needed.

The interchange in Canton has been greatly improved with the widening project. It goes from 4 to 5 full travel lanes right before it and then expands to 6 so that way people getting onto 95 south are separated from those staying onto 95 north as there are 4 full separate travel lanes.
 
mass88 said:
Does this state have an issue with using flyover ramps and stacked interchanges?

I am not saying we need to have massive interchanges like the High Five down in Dallas, but for major interchanges, having a setup that makes sense and offers the smoothest transitions for drivers is needed.

The interchange in Canton has been greatly improved with the widening project. It goes from 4 to 5 full travel lanes right before it and then expands to 6 so that way people getting onto 95 south are separated from those staying onto 95 north as there are 4 full separate travel lanes.
Click to expand...

The biggest problem is the movement from 95 north onto 128 north - and that's solved by building a flyover ramp to reduce the turn down to ~90 degrees instead of 270. We can bulk it up to 3 lanes so that 95 north never drops a lane as it merges in to 128 north.

93 south to 95 south is a relatively large problem as well, but it is already pointed in the right direction and would benefit mostly from some smoothing out, tangential to fixing the 95-128 clusterfuck. Similarly, the other movements don't need much other than some smoothing out.

After the ramps themselves are built, it wouldn't take much to flip traffic over to them, and then it's just a matter of smoothing out the merging on the 95 end of things.

Really, this should have been part of the add-a-lane project. It's incredibly high priority, but it's relatively simple and straightforward as far as highway projects go. Zero land acquisition needs to happen, all of the equipment is there for add-a-lane... really, I have to ask why it WASN'T included in the project scope. They're directly related.
 
we own all the land
Click to expand...

If 'we' means the state, then 'we' own both the highway right-of-way and the state park land. If the highway is to be rebuilt, I hope it can be done with no net loss of park land.
 
Commuting Boston Student said:
The biggest problem is the movement from 95 north onto 128 north - and that's solved by building a flyover ramp to reduce the turn down to ~90 degrees instead of 270. We can bulk it up to 3 lanes so that 95 north never drops a lane as it merges in to 128 north.

93 south to 95 south is a relatively large problem as well, but it is already pointed in the right direction and would benefit mostly from some smoothing out, tangential to fixing the 95-128 clusterfuck. Similarly, the other movements don't need much other than some smoothing out.

After the ramps themselves are built, it wouldn't take much to flip traffic over to them, and then it's just a matter of smoothing out the merging on the 95 end of things.

Really, this should have been part of the add-a-lane project. It's incredibly high priority, but it's relatively simple and straightforward as far as highway projects go. Zero land acquisition needs to happen, all of the equipment is there for add-a-lane... really, I have to ask why it WASN'T included in the project scope. They're directly related.
Click to expand...

Funding and timing. They couldn't swallow that as an add-on without too much mission creep sinking the whole project, and the stage of design it was in didn't sync with the rest of the 128 to-do list and would've delayed the start of the add-a-lane by a couple more years. The breadth of the project area already makes the add-a-lane an extremely complex build as far as satisfying stakeholders. So rather than cripple the whole thing with a longer wait, dicier price tag, and mitigation IOU's for a few more communities downwind on 95 they plowed forward with the widening and sheared off Canton as a separate project.

All told it'll be easier to get it done that way...one EIS, one funding commitment, one limited project area, fewer tasks and less room for mission creep, one isolated set of construction delays. And the rest of 128 being 8 lanes makes the road's resiliency to handle construction delays a lot better when the time comes. For expediency's sake they did it in the right sequence.
 
Ron Newman said:
If 'we' means the state, then 'we' own both the highway right-of-way and the state park land. If the highway is to be rebuilt, I hope it can be done with no net loss of park land.
Click to expand...

"We" means MassDOT.

This can absolutely be done with no net loss of park land. I'm willing to tentatively say there'd be no gross loss of land either - the absolute worst case scenario is that the park trades two acres of its own land for two acres of highway land, or something along those lines. Either way, we will end up with the same or more amount of park land than what we started with.

mass88 said:
I found this site with a quick Google search. Looks like there are at least some proposals as to how this interchange in Canton should be changed.

Some nice ideas for the interchange.

http://www.mhd.state.ma.us/cantoninterchange/


http://www.mhd.state.ma.us/cantoninterchange/northernstub_designconcept.html

Even some idea as to what to do with the current Northern stub and the excess that would remain after the interchange is done.
Click to expand...

Case in point, although I think the design has a long way to go - and the fact that the project scope appears to have expanded to include the University Avenue exit on 128 and the Dedham Street exit on 95 is vaguely unsettling to me.
 
Commuting Boston Student said:
Case in point, although I think the design has a long way to go - and the fact that the project scope appears to have expanded to include the University Avenue exit on 128 and the Dedham Street exit on 95 is vaguely unsettling to me.
Click to expand...

The new flyover merge would've been even closer to the Univ. Ave. exit than the current cloverleaf ramp, which is already a bad weaving situation where 128N traffic has to cross merging 95N traffic to get to the exit. The new exit alignment is necessary to eliminate that and allow for a full 1 mile of merging space before Exit 14. Ditto SB where Univ. Ave. badly worsens the backups at the 95S split with even tighter weaving. It's absolutely a project requirement. To have higher-speed traffic coming across the split only does so much good when it slams into the same peak-hour weaving situation at that gauntlet of exits.

The 138 exit isn't much better for weaving right where the roadways merge. They fiddled with it on the add-a-lane project, but that one had very limited possibility for improvement. Given that, the best thing they could do was offer up some help for the equally bad exit spacing on the other side.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
The new flyover merge would've been even closer to the Univ. Ave. exit than the current cloverleaf ramp, which is already a bad weaving situation where 128N traffic has to cross merging 95N traffic to get to the exit. The new exit alignment is necessary to eliminate that and allow for a full 1 mile of merging space before Exit 14. Ditto SB where Univ. Ave. badly worsens the backups at the 95S split with even tighter weaving. It's absolutely a project requirement. To have higher-speed traffic coming across the split only does so much good when it slams into the same peak-hour weaving situation at that gauntlet of exits.

The 138 exit isn't much better for weaving right where the roadways merge. They fiddled with it on the add-a-lane project, but that one had very limited possibility for improvement. Given that, the best thing they could do was offer up some help for the equally bad exit spacing on the other side.
Click to expand...

Well, if we're going to say that re-aligning the University Avenue exit and creating a Dedham Street exit (my bad, apparently there isn't actually one there today) is absolutely vital to fixing the merge, then just plain closing the 138 exit suddenly looks a lot better, as you can route any traffic trying to get to 138 along Dedham Street (from 95N) via University Avenue (from 128/93).

I'm mostly concerned about the potential for mission creep here (as seen above), particularly since the gauntlet of exits actually includes Exit 14 as well as Exit 15, and all of 93 up to Exit 5. I'm not saying those weaving problems don't need to be addressed eventually - I'm just not sure how much more of a beneficial impact dealing with University Ave is going to have when there's still the other 6 exits. In a way, I expect Exits 14/15 on 128 and Exits 2/4/5 (does anyone even use 3?) on 93 to end up looking worse.
 
Dedham Street in Canton doesn't connect to Rt 138. You would have to use Washington St (or some other side streets which aren't built to handle the traffic) to connect and there is a lot of traffic on that already, it couldn't handle it. There are a number of office parks off Rt 138 so that needs to stay open.

The State Police use Exit 3 and they just recently rebuilt the overpass, so I doubt that would close.

It makes more sense to keep the traffic on the highways and not to push it into the side streets.
 
TallIsGood said:
Dedham Street in Canton doesn't connect to Rt 138. You would have to use Washington St (or some other side streets which aren't built to handle the traffic) to connect and there is a lot of traffic on that already, it couldn't handle it. There are a number of office parks off Rt 138 so that needs to stay open.

The State Police use Exit 3 and they just recently rebuilt the overpass, so I doubt that would close.

It makes more sense to keep the traffic on the highways and not to push it into the side streets.
Click to expand...

Washington Street IS 138.
 
^ Not where Dedham St connects to it. Washington St becomes Rt 138 near the Ponkapoag Golf Course. 138 continues south as Turnpike St to Stoughton (where it becomes a different Washington St...).
 
Commuting Boston Student said:
Well, if we're going to say that re-aligning the University Avenue exit and creating a Dedham Street exit (my bad, apparently there isn't actually one there today) is absolutely vital to fixing the merge, then just plain closing the 138 exit suddenly looks a lot better, as you can route any traffic trying to get to 138 along Dedham Street (from 95N) via University Avenue (from 128/93).

I'm mostly concerned about the potential for mission creep here (as seen above), particularly since the gauntlet of exits actually includes Exit 14 as well as Exit 15, and all of 93 up to Exit 5. I'm not saying those weaving problems don't need to be addressed eventually - I'm just not sure how much more of a beneficial impact dealing with University Ave is going to have when there's still the other 6 exits. In a way, I expect Exits 14/15 on 128 and Exits 2/4/5 (does anyone even use 3?) on 93 to end up looking worse.
Click to expand...

138's a major cross-state highway going from Mattapan Sq. to Newport and all the way to Voluntown, CT. And it's the most direct shot to Mattapan, Readville, and Stoughton center. Absolutely no way they can shut that exit; that's the most important non-expressway road heading south of Boston after US 1 and MA 28.

Unfortunately there's just not a lot they can do about the exit spacing there. The Exit 2 cloverleaf is pinned in by local development and can't be modified much more than the accel/decel improvements they just did with the add-a-lane. So they have to pick their battles with the 128N/95N side. The really superfluous exit is Ponkapoag, which has too low a traffic volume and is too easily accessible from 138/Hillside St. to fuck with Route 24 interchange weaving as much as it does. It's 1/4 mile from the 24 split and 1/3 mile from 138. Nobody uses it, but everybody instinctually times their weaving to avoid it. I can't believe they rebuilt that exit with the add-a-lane. That's absurd. Doubly absurd that they rebuilt it lock, stock, and barrel with more generous accel/decel space that creeps even closer to the adjacent exits and squeezes the right-lane weaving to an even more miniscule space.


Dedham St. has a one-eighth interchange right now: http://goo.gl/maps/eZiBp. One-way only from Dedham St. EB east to 95S. Fairly trivial matter to turn that into a half-diamond. Kind of baffling that it isn't already one. Who does on-ramps as limited as that one???
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Dedham St. has a one-eighth interchange right now: http://goo.gl/maps/eZiBp. One-way only from Dedham St. EB east to 95S. Fairly trivial matter to turn that into a half-diamond. Kind of baffling that it isn't already one. Who does on-ramps as limited as that one???
Click to expand...

The problem is the width of the bridge and not enough space for turn lanes. They are going to add a 95N exit to Dedham street when they rebuild the bridges over 95 and and the NEC lines. Canton wants to restrict the 95N offramp to left turns only into Westwood. It was supposed to happen with the rebuilt 93/95 interchange and Westwood Station development, but not sure of the timing now.
 
So over the last few years I have occasionally driven this stretch of Route 128 and have taken pictures of the construction. I will post those photos soon.
 
This was from March 2012. Shown is the Great Plain Avenue bridge being replaced in Needham. Note the old bridge in the backround and notice how much higher the new bridge is.

2dakb3b.jpg
 
This one from late March 2012 shows work ongoing on the Route 109 bridge over Route 128 NB in Dedham.

n5hnj8.jpg
 
Nice pictures.

The Great Plain Ave bridge is pretty much down and looks great. The old bridge is completely gone.

Once the get the 109 bridge done on both sides, they'll be able to open up another stretch of the widened highway.

The bulk of the construction right now, at least from what I can tell, is working on replacing the overpasses near the prison at exit 17/135. The other area is building a wall so they can add a 5th lane at the 93/95 interchange on the northbound side of 93.
 
Picture from September 2012 of work on Phase 1 of the new Charles River Bridges in Needham.

24y4bdf.jpg
 
Thanks Mass. Yes the current work involves widening for a 5th lane going SB (Or I-93 NB) from I-95 to Route 138. And Major work is currently ongoing in Needham.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top