Grounding the McGrath

datadyne007 said:
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This sucks. Granted, it is conceptual but it is undeniably vapid and ugly, resembling the Wellington Circle intersection and 1960's suburbia at it's worst.

My changes: Reduce the lanes to two through lanes each direction, plus a one-lane width landscaped median to accomodate occasional left turn lanes, and replace this mess of traffic lights and disjointed junctions with a roundabout. Also, add a seperate bike/ped trail in the corridor, and allow for high density development of some of the leftover land alongside the new boulevard.
 
mass88 said:
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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That's the problem. This is not supposed to be a highway anymore. It shouldn't become the SE Expressway.

I am thinking about future growth. I am thinking about the corridor becoming populated and urban. And a nasty 6 lane highway is going to hurt that significantly. It means more speeding, more car wrecks, more deaths of pedestrians and drivers, and fewer people wanting to walk there.

Why do the people worried about traffic growth never worry about the dangers of widening roads, and the decay it spawns around it?
 
Matthew said:
That's the problem. This is not supposed to be a highway anymore. It shouldn't become the SE Expressway.

I am thinking about future growth. I am thinking about the corridor becoming populated and urban. And a nasty 6 lane highway is going to hurt that significantly. It means more speeding, more car wrecks, more deaths of pedestrians and drivers, and fewer people wanting to walk there.

Why do the people worried about traffic growth never worry about the dangers of widening roads, and the decay it spawns around it?
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Exactly. Question: If the median and/or greenspace on the sides is designated as open space, will it fall under the restrictions set forth in Article 97?
 
Charlie_mta said:
This sucks. Granted, it is conceptual but it is undeniably vapid and ugly, resembling the Wellington Circle intersection and 1960's suburbia at it's worst.

My changes: Reduce the lanes to two through lanes each direction, plus a one-lane width landscaped median to accomodate occasional left turn lanes, and replace this mess of traffic lights and disjointed junctions with a roundabout. Also, add a seperate bike/ped trail in the corridor, and allow for high density development of some of the leftover land alongside the new boulevard.
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Too early to draw conclusions because the public comment period has just shifted from "whither elevated or boulevard" to critiquing the boulevard. And Somerville is well-prepared for this. They knew damn well MassHighway was going to present them with a highway, and they're ready for battle to try to bust this down to size. It not only ain't over, it's barely begun.


EVERYTHING between Broadway and Cambridge St. should be busted down to 2 lanes + left-turn lanes and reclaimed sidwalk + bike space. O'Brien never backs up NB out of Lechmere Sq. and SB never backs up unless the Lechmere Sq. queues approach the shopping plaza light. Medford St. only backs up because the intersection itself is so horribly designed and the short-distance weaving from the overpass and Washington St. ramp almost defeats the purpose of the overpass. Everywhere, even in Cambridge outside the McCarthy project scope, could use a major traffic calming and ped accessibility upgrade. At almost no cost other than re-striping, moving the sidewalk barriers on the bridge, re-timing signals, and maybe prettying up the place lightly on the other side of both the Fitchburg Line and Lowell Line overpasses.

Truck traffic and thru traffic volumes have plummeted post-Big Dig, and honestly if they could fix the mangled 93 access to 16 and Mystic Ave. there is a whole lot of additional load-spreading that would plummet the McGrath volumes further. MassHighway's models for this monstrosity are based on total status quo at the source, and arguably outdated models that underweight the downward trend. STEP's done their homework and will tear that thing to shreds. And they're a lot better disciplined top-down than the situation at Forest Hills where all those rogue groups and Hizzoner himself were undercutting the at-grade efforts and making it easier for MassHighway to get as overbuilt an at-grade option as they pleased. They haven't got as easy a path to impose their will here.
 
F-Line, Great observations about the Casey. Interestingly enough, the left side of the McGrath rendering Datadyne007 posted looks a lot like what MassDOT proposes for the intersection of the Casey Arborway and Washington/Hyde Park Ave even down to the lane count.
 
Did that just happen? One of my friends is in Wuhan right now.
 
Great MassDOT meeting in Somerville last night on interim traffic improvements. Plans at 75% completion call for three major changes to the area between Highland Ave and Somerville Ave. can't find docs online so I will sketch highlights. All this will go to construction in the spring:
1) close the southbound offramp from McCarthy overpass to Somerville Ave. rebuild this intersection. This currently creates a massive crush of traffic and accidents during am commute.
2) close the northbound tunnel under the overpass and redirect that traffic to a new punch through from Somerville ave/Medford St to Poplar St in Brickbottom.
3) steal a ton of excess pavement for new bike lanes in all directions. Including a "sharrow on steroids" (engineer's words) that is a never-before-done shared use lane on Medford St from Highland to Somerville Ave. allows bike access without killing a car lane.

I will try to find docs. It is hard to picture otherwise. Takeaway is more traffic diverted to Cambridge's 3rd St. But also tons of ped/bike improvements in what is maybe the scariest couple intersections in the area.
 
This is the underpass intersection near Sullivan Square, right?

Can anyone explain in a quick, simple way the history of the underpass? When I was in college back in 1986, I seem to remember either half or all of the underpass being closed. Eventually, by some miracle, half was opened? Or maybe half was always open and the other half opened?

Then, suddenly, half was closed again.

What happened?

Then they took down the overpass in the same area ... but was that done without the approval of the above plans?

WTF?
 
kjdonovan said:
Great MassDOT meeting in Somerville last night on interim traffic improvements. Plans at 75% completion call for three major changes to the area between Highland Ave and Somerville Ave. can't find docs online so I will sketch highlights. All this will go to construction in the spring:
1) close the southbound offramp from McCarthy overpass to Somerville Ave. rebuild this intersection. This currently creates a massive crush of traffic and accidents during am commute.
2) close the northbound tunnel under the overpass and redirect that traffic to a new punch through from Somerville ave/Medford St to Poplar St in Brickbottom.
3) steal a ton of excess pavement for new bike lanes in all directions. Including a "sharrow on steroids" (engineer's words) that is a never-before-done shared use lane on Medford St from Highland to Somerville Ave. allows bike access without killing a car lane.

I will try to find docs. It is hard to picture otherwise. Takeaway is more traffic diverted to Cambridge's 3rd St. But also tons of ped/bike improvements in what is maybe the scariest couple intersections in the area.
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Starting in the spring they'll begin the process of deconstructing the McGrath? They're still working on rebuilding it!

Ugh, what a fucking waste. This pisses me off. Why the hell are they working on it if they're tearing it down so soon?
 
never-before-done shared use lane
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It's a bike priority shared lane which isn't that new, it's also being phase-tested on Brighton Ave.
 
Matthew said:
It's a bike priority shared lane which isn't that new, it's also being phase-tested on Brighton Ave.
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There's also one on Longwood Ave, but I didn't even know they had a specific name. I ride on the one along Longwood all the time, but I actually think it's mostly useless since it doesn't offer much more than sharrows and nobody seems to actually know how it works. Most bicyclists I see along the same route never ride in it! Instead, they stick to the right side of the road. I'm guessing if cyclists don't know about it, the drivers are even less likely to.
 
JohnAKeith said:
This is the underpass intersection near Sullivan Square, right?

Can anyone explain in a quick, simple way the history of the underpass? When I was in college back in 1986, I seem to remember either half or all of the underpass being closed. Eventually, by some miracle, half was opened? Or maybe half was always open and the other half opened?

Then, suddenly, half was closed again.

What happened?

Then they took down the overpass in the same area ... but was that done without the approval of the above plans?

WTF?
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youre thinking of rutherford ave, north east of 93 - mcgrath is southwest of 93
 
Charlie_mta said:
This sucks. Granted, it is conceptual but it is undeniably vapid and ugly, resembling the Wellington Circle intersection and 1960's suburbia at it's worst.

My changes: Reduce the lanes to two through lanes each direction, plus a one-lane width landscaped median to accomodate occasional left turn lanes, and replace this mess of traffic lights and disjointed junctions with a roundabout. Also, add a seperate bike/ped trail in the corridor, and allow for high density development of some of the leftover land alongside the new boulevard.
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Charlie -- No one in their right mind will ever build another urban Rotary or Circle or Roundabout or whatever you want to call them

They work great as long as there is no traffic -- i.e. after midnight until about 5:00 AM -- Alewife was great when I was making a lot of late night runs to the P.O. at South Station after the T shut down

However, add even moderate traffic and you get fender benders and heavier traffic and you get grid lock
 
whighlander said:
Charlie -- No one in their right mind will ever build another urban Rotary or Circle or Roundabout or whatever you want to call them

They work great as long as there is no traffic -- i.e. after midnight until about 5:00 AM -- Alewife was great when I was making a lot of late night runs to the P.O. at South Station after the T shut down

However, add even moderate traffic and you get fender benders and heavier traffic and you get grid lock
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Cool. Bring on the heavier traffic. Remove the city-blighting rusted hulks of overpasses, narrow the damned highway, put in some roundabouts, and starve the traffic. Somerville, or any city for that matter, isn't just a paved parking lot for suburbanites to trample over to get to work, it's a city with people and neighborhoods. Take down all these hulking, rotten relics from the 1950's: McGrath, Bowker and Casey. They make no sense in the real world of today, and it is confounding that MassDot seems hellbent on propping up these hemorrhaging dinosaurs from an age long gone.
 
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