General Thoughts/State of Southeast Expressway

[whighlander]

That practice mercifully ends in Dedham this Summer when the 4th lane opens between Route 109 and Route 24. They finished all but a couple hundred feet of roadbed grading before ground freeze and just have touch-up work to do in Spring. That ends breakdown lane travel on a little over half the road, with Needham taking another 2-1/2 years because of all the bridge work.

Feds have banned that practice now so we'll never see a new instance of breakdown lane travel. Existing ones are still grandfathered, though. MA also does it on Route 3 on the 4-lane stretch from 3A in Duxbury to 18 in Weymouth. ...

I think that only applies to expressways, though. Norwood asked Westwood last year to cooperate with them on a plan to open up Route 1 breakdown travel, apparently seeing no issue whatsoever with curb cuts + 50 MPH traffic barrelling through all those turnouts. Westwood voted it down.

Egad.

F-Line don't forget there is a substantial amount of I-93 N to I-495 where every evening the 3 Travel Lanes and the Breakdown Lane fill up

This was the result of dropping the 4th travel lane in Andover and not providing a clean 2 lane exit to I-495

I think the problem on the other side is less of an issue due to the drive-time traffic dynamics at various interchanges being different between morning / evening and N/S

 

[Kahta]

F-Line don't forget there is a substantial amount of I-93 N to I-495 where every evening the 3 Travel Lanes and the Breakdown Lane fill up

This was the result of dropping the 4th travel lane in Andover and not providing a clean 2 lane exit to I-495

I think the problem on the other side is less of an issue due to the drive-time traffic dynamics at various interchanges being different between morning / evening and N/S

93 is scheduled to become a full 8-lane facility at some point to prevent a logjam when NH finishes their expansion.