Next big highway project?

[F-Line to Dudley]

that bridge was just rebuilt last year; what else needs to be done to it?

Not the bridge itself. The Mountfort St./Carlton St./Comm Ave./University Rd. weaving insanity. All of that needs to be compacted into a single-point intersection with protected left-turn cycles. It'll function way better than the two separate lights and quasi-rotary where the queues back up over Comm Ave. and the B line tracks.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Wow, great question. I never really noticed that the end of Truman points directly at the Canton split. As it is, it's a big road to nowhere.

EIS'ing through the Neponset Reservation is a total no-go. There will never ever be a continuing road through there.

Except for requiring one turn at an intersection Truman feeds pretty fluidly onto Neponset Valley Pkwy. and Route 138. Could use better signage pointing that as a thru route to 128 since the volumes are pretty low on those parkways and it's a nice, mostly signal-free fast ride. It's too bad truck traffic out of Readville has to plow west to Dedham Ctr. and rumble through all that residential because heavy trucking is banned on the DCR parkways. The parkways would be a much less invasive shipping route for goods exiting the freight yard for points inside 128.

 

[Matthew]

As I mentioned in the other thread, MassDOT seems interested in redoing the Comm Ave/Essex/Carlton intersection and has supposedly approached town and city officials about it already.

They are also doing a separate project to replace the piers underneath the bridge, in 2015.

 

[Charlie_mta]

Anything that is done here should have as its primary goal making the area more pleasant and safe to walk around. And secondarily, enabling an infill commuter rail station.

Here's what I would do with Newton Corner. Roads are red and development parcels are yellow:

 

[Shepard]

Love the concept. Don't get why you chose to withhold direct access from northbound Centre St to the inbound pike ramp and similarly why southbound Galen can't directly get on to Washington St westbound. I think maintaining those connections would be very useful.

 

[Equilibria]

Here's what I would do with Newton Corner. Roads are red and development parcels are yellow:

Honestly, that's a lot better than I thought was possible. I agree with Shep on the Centre/Pike question, but I get that adding the northside access to the roundabout probably wouldn't work (though that might make me question the utility of a roundabout in that case).

Also, where does WB Washington St. begin in this concept? You appear to have it one-way when it enters the frame.

The sad part is that there's virtually no chance any of those air rights developments would work out. If folks can't get financing lined up in Fenway and the Back Bay, what are the chances anyone would fund them in Newton?

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

The sad part is that there's virtually no chance any of those air rights developments would work out. If folks can't get financing lined up in Fenway and the Back Bay, what are the chances anyone would fund them in Newton?

Newton = no BRA.


I agree it's not going to be easy, but the sheer bureaucracy involved in Boston has been its own daunting inhibitor for 50 years in trying to get all these golden Pike air rights parcels filled in. Newton doesn't have a third of the bureaucracy holding it back. Plus the fact that it's lower-density Newton simplifies the questions about how tall these developments have to be, and the need to hit a grand slam on the proposal before committing to build at all.

 

[Charlie_mta]

Also, where does WB Washington St. begin in this concept? You appear to have it one-way when it enters the frame.

Washington Street would be two-way as it crosses the Pike on what is now the west side of the giant rotary.

The additional surface street tie-throughs wouldn't be a problem. I was just trying to reduce the number of traffic light cycles, but the tie-throughs would alleviate potential congestion at the proposed roundabout.

 

[davem]

IIRC, historically there was not a road on the south side of the B&A, so I would probably eliminate all of them to reduce intersections (for the EB offramp, it would also let it have a longer decel lane to stop it backing up onto the pike at rush hour). Ironically you seem to have gotten rid of the only part that should stay, since that development has retail facing the street.

Check out wardmaps.com to see how it used to be configured.

 

[whighlander]

There are 3 main interchanges in the Metro area that need to be completely rebuilt: the 93/95 interchange in Woburn, the 93/95 interchange in Canton and the 90/95 interchange in Weston.

These are in addition to the Allston/Brighton toll situation.

Mass -- Precisely

Priority is 93/95 in Woburn -- it was done in the bad old days of mixing on/off ramp traffic and now it handles over 300,000 vehicles per day

separate lanes need to be provided that go north on 93, E on 95, W on 95 all splitting from the main barrel of 93 after Montvale Ave.

Similarly the backdoor exit from 93 South that passes the Target at street level needs to connect to 95/128 in the vicinity of the old Commuter Rail stop on Mishawam Rd,

93/95/93 in Canton should be next -- same approach progressive branching of dedicated lanes

Then the problem at 93/Rt-3 in Braintree with Rt-3 redesignated as I-93 and the spur between I-95 and Braintree I-193

 

[CSTH]

Originally Posted by mass88

There are 3 main interchanges in the Metro area that need to be completely rebuilt: the 93/95 interchange in Woburn, the 93/95 interchange in Canton and the 90/95 interchange in Weston.

These are in addition to the Allston/Brighton toll situation.

Yes - also, the 90/95 in weston seems to offer some really interesting redevelopment possibilities, especially given the advent of open road tolling. That thing just chews up acreage in a place that has really interesting topography - and river frontage.

Narrowing the highway & ramp footprint + green / purple transit + a big parking garage + landmark 'gateway' bridge + many acres of something mid-rise, mixed use and intensively walkable on the river could be amazing - provided your could insulate it effectively from the Weston NIMBYS (it could only be an improvement on the existing backyard, right?)

 

[Charlie_mta]

Yeah, any interchange reconfiguration at 90/95 would definitely need to fit within the existing footprint.

Lots of rich NIMBYs and their lawyers in that area.

 

[wicked]

EIS'ing through the Neponset Reservation is a total no-go. There will never ever be a continuing road through there.

Except for requiring one turn at an intersection Truman feeds pretty fluidly onto Neponset Valley Pkwy. and Route 138. Could use better signage pointing that as a thru route to 128 since the volumes are pretty low on those parkways and it's a nice, mostly signal-free fast ride. It's too bad truck traffic out of Readville has to plow west to Dedham Ctr. and rumble through all that residential because heavy trucking is banned on the DCR parkways. The parkways would be a much less invasive shipping route for goods exiting the freight yard for points inside 128.

When Stop & Shop opened the Readville warehouse (is it still open?), which IIRC was in the late '60s or early '70s, there was talk of an access road to 128. You also would have had access to the Southwest Expressway. Of course, this was back in the day where you could just plow through Neponset Reservation and get away with it.

 

[Kahta]

3/128 incomplete interchange. Another one from a canceled highway that's carrying more volume than a half-cloverleaf was ever designed to. The backups into Lexington don't ease until this piece of shit gets blown up and remade as a flyover. Another critical priority.

Was this a casualty of the big dig? Presumably it would have been part of the Route 3 add-a-lane project about 15 years ago.

 

[Arlington]

Was this a casualty of the big dig? Presumably it would have been part of the Route 3 add-a-lane project about 15 years ago.

More likely that it is now suffering from induced demand: now that US 3 moves more freely, it is worth queuing to get on/off it---not unlike the way that MA 2 clogs up Alewife and Mass Ave.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Was this a casualty of the big dig? Presumably it would have been part of the Route 3 add-a-lane project about 15 years ago.

They did minor cosmetic changes to 128 by sticking a jersey barrier on the right lanes in each direction to separate the 3 and Middlesex Tpke. exits and weave-a-thon into a collector/distributor setup behind the barrier. The ramps are the same FAIL they've always been but it allows an enforced lower speed limit behind the barrier and higher speed limit on the 128 thru lanes which ever-so-slightly mitigates the miles of slowdowns on either end of the interchange.

But it's a band-aid at best because the ramp-induced bottlenecks still overspill well past the extent of the barriered lanes in either direction. It's still an all-world shitty interchange carrying 4x the traffic the cloverleaf was designed for because the highway never continued.

 

[Ron Newman]

Would it help to just extend Route 3 a quarter mile or so southeast to a new Y-intersection with Lowell Street/Middlesex Turnpike somewhere near the Burlington-Lexington town line? Maybe where the Adams Street intersection is today?

Once you do that, you can turn the trumpet interchange back into a cloverleaf, reopening the disused loop ramps of 3 N -> 95 S and 95 N -> 3 N.

 

[Equilibria]

Would it help to just extend Route 3 a quarter mile or so southeast to a new Y-intersection with Lowell Street/Middlesex Turnpike somewhere near the Burlington-Lexington town line? Maybe where the Adams Street intersection is today?

Once you do that, you can turn the trumpet interchange back into a cloverleaf, reopening the disused loop ramps of 3 N -> 95 S and 95 N -> 3 N.

I doubt that extending Route 3 at all is politically feasible even if the technical side worked out. From a technical standpoint, the issue with truncating the road wasn't that cars couldn't go through, it was that they couldn't go through to Boston. Unless a significant amount of the traffic at that interchange is headed to East Lexington and Arlington, adding a direct feed to Middlesex Turnpike won't help much. The traffic will still pile on the tiny loop ramps and the new mainline will be empty.

A cloverleaf is better than what's there, but it's not great for flow either. What's needed at Route 3 is the same kind of interchange MassDOT has planned for Canton:

http://www.mhd.state.ma.us/cantoninterchange/images/ENF_alt.jpg

The key is the high speeds and large curve radii, with multiple lanes from the terminating road to both 128 directions. Of course, there's more going on in Burlington, and any new interchange will likely need to accommodate a new Middlesex Turnpike setup and perhaps a new ramp directly from 3 to MT.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

I doubt that extending Route 3 at all is politically feasible even if the technical side worked out. From a technical standpoint, the issue with truncating the road wasn't that cars couldn't go through, it was that they couldn't go through to Boston. Unless a significant amount of the traffic at that interchange is headed to East Lexington and Arlington, adding a direct feed to Middlesex Turnpike won't help much. The traffic will still pile on the tiny loop ramps and the new mainline will be empty.

A cloverleaf is better than what's there, but it's not great for flow either. What's needed at Route 3 is the same kind of interchange MassDOT has planned for Canton:

http://www.mhd.state.ma.us/cantoninterchange/images/ENF_alt.jpg

The key is the high speeds and large curve radii, with multiple lanes from the terminating road to both 128 directions. Of course, there's more going on in Burlington, and any new interchange will likely need to accommodate a new Middlesex Turnpike setup and perhaps a new ramp directly from 3 to MT.

The replacement can definitely consolidate 3 and Middlesex into some sort of combo exit. The Canton split project attempts to do the same with University Ave. in similar confines, so that's a good template to work from.

But no ifs, ands, or buts the interchange doesn't stop sucking (and sucking for miles around) until all 3<-->128 movements have high-speed, low-curvature ramps designed for the loads in the prevailing traffic direction.

 

[Kahta]

Also-- the 3N configuration where the traffic from 128N has all three lanes and the 128S traffic has to merge could easily be fxed with just repainting.