Grounding the McGrath

I think he said they patched up a few holes. Enough to get the Feds off their back for a little.
 
Ron Newman said:
At tonight's meeting, the assembled crowd of more than 100 people were united in asking the state to cancel the repair project, post lower weight limits on the bridge, and proceed as soon as possible to demolition.

According to the presentation, this was built in 1955, repaired in 1982 then again in 2007-8.
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Ron, I remember it fondly and exhuberantly from the late 50's / erly 60's when traveling from one uncle's house in East Cambridge to another uncle living near to Medford Square

It was the absoulute in state of the art in "cool" you had underpasses with flourescent lights and an elevated highway -- it was almost as impressive as the Callahan and South Station Tunnels -- only riding over the Tobin was "neater and cooler"

But things like people change and evolve -- and perhaps decay a bit arround the edges -- I'll miss the McGrath / Obrien whan it comes down -- either by intentional hand of man or perhaps Newton
 
BostonUrbEx said:
If even Kahta says a road should be downgraded, you know its true.
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Urb -- I'm not convinced -- there are plenty of times when the traffic is quite heavy near to the Medford St. / Higland Ave intersection

I'd like to know where the "Mass Ave-like" traffic measurements were made.
 
whighlander said:
Urb -- I'm not convinced -- there are plenty of times when the traffic is quite heavy near to the Medford St. / Higland Ave intersection

I'd like to know where the "Mass Ave-like" traffic measurements were made.
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There are traffic count maps on the official project docs page. 25-year increases project flat from the 2011 actual counts to the 2035 projecteds, so the post-Big Dig dip is not going to see any return in levels.


Re: the Highland/Medford/McGrath merge, there's a key comment in one of the 2011 Meeting Minutes summaries from a project mgr. assigned to the traffic counts. The heaviest congestion point in the study area is from Medford St. to Washington. On the side ramps, not the overpass at all. So the structure itself, which no longer serves major thru-traffic demand, is proving to be the #1 bottleneck itself to local travel. The Washington St. intersection clusterfuck, the cramped southbound ramp with its dangerous on-street parking, and the northbound ramp that forces within a 400 ft. span a 4-to-3 lane merge and a 3-to-5 lane weave for diverging traffic are the ones messing up the flow.

Two things to take from that:
1) This is not fixable without blowing up the structure eating up 2/3 the width of this block. There's no finessing they can do on the same footprint that's going to eliminate the weaving problems. Local traffic would be better served by a surface road eliminating the excessive and over-constrained weaving.
2) The natural inclination of the local traffic through the area already is square-to-square if the heaviest loads are between those two intersections on the ramps. Not only is the highway thru route depreciated, it's repressing the actual local flow. So preservation of the structure is resisting where the current users most want to go, and funding repairs to it is throwing traffic engineering money at an anachronism. That's a very different thing from the Bowker and Casey situations where urban renewal is the front-and-center factor driving it. This one can be argued on grounds of good vs. bad traffic engineering moving forward.


BOTH are gigantic strikes against keeping the overpass. But I would actually make point #2 a significant plank in the teardown advocacy and not get exclusively fixated on the eyesore/pedestrian wall aspect. If the highest demand is square-to-square and on- street grid and the 25-year projections show no deviations from that, then it's lousy asphalt'in policy to side with the flyover that permanently harms the local flow. That's an easily graspable point even for the auto-centric citizen.
 
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KJ--

We need to do another frappe audit and pronto. Can never conduct too much research of that persuasion.

(All others please ignore the brief thread hijack--just an inside thing)
 
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A number of people spoke at the meeting to voice general approval for the concept of tearing down the highway overpass. However, many thought the study's boulevard proposal was still too much like a highway, albeit one at street level.

"I don't think we need three lanes going in both directions," said Rob Buchanan.

"It feels like we're putting the VFW Parkway through Somerville," he said. He called for putting the proposal on a "road diet," reducing the number of lanes.

"I feel you worked very hard to maintain the traffic," said Mark Chase. "Six lanes is just a very long way to cross" if you're a pedestrian.

Ethan Britland, a project manager with MassDOT, said of the study's recommendation, "Technically it is a road diet." He said maintaining the current highway's capacity would require four lanes in each direction.
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It is going to come down to highway engineers vs urban planners. Looking at that rendering it's obvious the designers are only worried about cars. The pedestrian element is laughable. What is that "green space"? You can't do anything with that but pay someone to mow it. If you are going to use medians design them to separate traffic better.

Why not a boulevard like Comm Ave with central travel lanes and separated frontage roads with two medians?
 
The VFW Parkway is not a massive road, it's 2 lanes in each direction with the exception of some third turn lanes at different lights. I don't see how that would be a bad model. Or deserve the comment about a road diet.
 
mass88 said:
The VFW Parkway is not a massive road, it's 2 lanes in each direction with the exception of some third turn lanes at different lights. I don't see how that would be a bad model. Or deserve the comment about a road diet.
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The Melnea Cass Blvd is primarily what you described too. The VFW Pkwy is essentially just a longer version of the MCB.
 
vanshnookenraggen said:
Why not a boulevard like Comm Ave with central travel lanes and separated frontage roads with two medians?
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Love this idea. Comm Ave is a very wide, heavily trafficked road, but the way it's broken up through Allston I never felt scared to cross it. Lots of places to stop as you make your way across.
 
The results of this planning study are very conceptual. MassDOT claims that to meet the CTPS model for traffic growth for 2035 they'd actually need 4 lanes in each direction plus turn lanes, so 3 lanes was their compromise. But even they recognize that projecting traffic growth is ridiculous since traffic volumes have been going down since 2004, and even in Kendall Square, which Somerville says is their model for development in the Inner Belt, traffic volumes went down 10%-14% along with 4.6 million square feet of new development. Unfortunately they are required to use the CTPS model in their planning.

People in the community nearly all agree that 2 lanes in each direction with the occasional turn lane is the best solution that accommodates quite a bit of traffic but doesn't feel like a surface highway.

Regarding the open space, sidewalk, and cycle track location, MassDOT said all of those things still need to be determined. The study just shows what you could do in general and that you could fit them all in. The open space doesn't have to be park space. Some or all of it could be used for new development.
 
cden4 said:
Regarding the open space, sidewalk, and cycle track location, MassDOT said all of those things still need to be determined. The study just shows what you could do in general and that you could fit them all in. The open space doesn't have to be park space. Some or all of it could be used for new development.
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Agreed. I hope the era of leafy medians on four lane boulevards has come to an end. Better to move that space to the sidewalks. I would say Mass Ave (no median w four lanes of traffic) rather than Comm Ave is the ideal example of what Somerville and Cambridge want.

In the presentation they showed an interesting stat: only 10 percent of drivers starting at Broadway in Somerville traveled all the way to the Museum of Science. Point being, the road is not a thruway for out-of-towners but is used locally. Most people getting on McGrath near the 93 ramp/Stop & Shop got off in Union Square.

If they made McGrath into a new Mass Ave, in addition to the planned reworked traffic plan of Union Square, I think they could get her on even more of a road diet.
 
kjdonovan said:
I would say Mass Ave (no median w four lanes of traffic) rather than Comm Ave is the ideal example of what Somerville and Cambridge want.
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Or columbus/tremont/washington in the south end/roxbury
 
It's unbelievably irresponsible to widen a road based on models projecting to 2035. What could we have said about 2013 back in 1991? CTPS ought to know better.
 
Perhaps a third bus lane might be appropriate in some places, although GLX partially obviates that.
 
Well if you had one median lane that was wide enough for a pedestrian and bike track that would be a good compromise. I still say a frontage road would take care of any extra local traffic and allow a 4/5 lane center road for through traffic.

Also a lot of it will come down to light timing.
 
Matthew said:
It's unbelievably irresponsible to widen a road based on models projecting to 2035. What could we have said about 2013 back in 1991? CTPS ought to know better.
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True, but you should at least think about future growth and leave some space to expand if necessary. Look at the Southeast Expressway as an example.
 
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