Route 3 Widening

Any widening of Route 3 or the SE X-Way should be done by adding an additional lane in each direction as a "Hot" Lane, down the center of the highway.

A Hot lane is basically a congestion-tolled lane that charges higher tolls during rush hours, and charges a lesser toll, or no toll, for cars with 2 or more passengers. The Hot lane tolls are collected by electronic scanning, not toll booths. No physical barrier is needed between the Hot lane and the general traffic lanes, only a double white line, as is the case on the I-495 Hot lane west of DC, the Route 167 Hot Lane south of Seattle, and the ones in Orange County CA. There should be an 8' to 10' wide breakdown lane on the left side of the Hot lane.

This type of arrangement could fit easily in the existing Route 3 ROW. On the SE Expwy, some additional land and a lot of retaining walls would need to be built, but most of it could be financed with the tolls.

I think it’s a fair solution. If people choose to drive as the single occupant in their car, or drive during the peak traffic hours, then they pay more to get in the Hot lane. Seems logical and fair to me to fund highway widening this way. Also, the additional tolling cost may prompt some people to take the Red line or Greenbush rail line instead of driving.
 
Charlie_mta said:
Any widening of Route 3 or the SE X-Way should be done by adding an additional lane in each direction as a "Hot" Lane, down the center of the highway.
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I'll admit, up front, that I'd much rather not see the Southeast Expressway widened at all. It should be reduced from 8 lanes down to 6 and the two lanes of space taken for full or 3/4-width shoulders/breakdown lanes, and traveling in the breakdown lane should be a) expressly forbidden and b) punished heavily and frequently. Park two or three cops and whack everyone for $100 until people get the message, you'll probably pay off your restriping project on breakdown lane travel tickets alone. Same deal with Route 3, although I'm not as intimately familiar with that road - the parts of it with substandard or missing shoulders need to be corrected, especially if (as I vaguely recall being discussed before) you want to rebanner I-93 down that corridor instead of 128 to 95 as it is today.

If we absolutely have to widen the highway, I still don't want to see HOT lanes. Again, adding full or 3/4-width shoulders on its own should both consume most of the space taken for widening and actually make traffic flow better on that road without inducing demand for the influx of new vehicles that you'd get from a new lane. The capacity of the road doesn't increase any with shoulders, as they're not meant to be driven on - and unlike with the restriping that I'd much prefer, actually going ahead with widening the road means we can design the breakdown lane to be impossible to drive on.

If you can somehow combine restriping for shoulders with the HOT lanes, I could see myself supporting that - but absolutely nothing less. Absent whatever my or anyone else's personal feelings about highways through urban environments, sacrificing safety for capacity is never a good idea.
 
Charlie_mta said:
Any widening of Route 3 or the SE X-Way should be done by adding an additional lane in each direction as a "Hot" Lane, down the center of the highway.

A Hot lane is basically a congestion-tolled lane that charges higher tolls during rush hours, and charges a lesser toll, or no toll, for cars with 2 or more passengers. The Hot lane tolls are collected by electronic scanning, not toll booths. No physical barrier is needed between the Hot lane and the general traffic lanes, only a double white line, as is the case on the I-495 Hot lane west of DC, the Route 167 Hot Lane south of Seattle, and the ones in Orange County CA. There should be an 8' to 10' wide breakdown lane on the left side of the Hot lane.

This type of arrangement could fit easily in the existing Route 3 ROW. On the SE Expwy, some additional land and a lot of retaining walls would need to be built, but most of it could be financed with the tolls.

I think it’s a fair solution. If people choose to drive as the single occupant in their car, or drive during the peak traffic hours, then they pay more to get in the Hot lane. Seems logical and fair to me to fund highway widening this way. Also, the additional tolling cost may prompt some people to take the Red line or Greenbush rail line instead of driving.
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Any additional widening to the SE Expressway - be it for lanes or shoulders - would require expanding the right of way via expensive and disruptive land takings or elevating the new lanes. While I would love to see a modern, elevated 4-lane tollway along the SE Expressway to compliment the current capacity, I don't see that as being highly realistic. Widening the route by any significant margin is also a dead-in-the-water proposal.

I completely agree, though, any widening to 3 should be accompanied by a HOT/HOV lane set up. Something akin to the HOV lanes in the Bay Area would be great - restricted and/or tolled during rush hour (6-10a and 3-7p) and otherwise free for all vehicles.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
3 itself is no picnic. The lane-drop at 18 in Weymouth fucks up the flow end-to-end on the highway...downwind to Duxbury on the 4-lane + breakdown travel portion and upstream to Braintree with all the weaving at the lane drops. And the breakdown travel, while being a stupid idea to begin with, actually makes things worse when something...uh...breaks down by leaving a lower-capacity choke than if you weren't using the shoulder at all.
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Safety improvements are fine, although I have to wonder if there is actually a problem, is this worth the money, or are there better values out there?

Upping capacity is a much lower priority than safety. Even supposing all those Route 3 drivers are headed to Braintree park-n-ride (bear with me), that further depresses ridership on the expensive Old Colony branches we just blew way too much capital to build out, all while putting more stress on the Red Line. Expanding freeway capacity alongside new railroad branches is something VTA in Santa Clara is really good at ... and it's been a major fiasco.
 
Matthew said:
Safety improvements are fine, although I have to wonder if there is actually a problem, is this worth the money, or are there better values out there?

Upping capacity is a much lower priority than safety. Even supposing all those Route 3 drivers are headed to Braintree park-n-ride (bear with me), that further depresses ridership on the expensive Old Colony branches we just blew way too much capital to build out, all while putting more stress on the Red Line. Expanding freeway capacity alongside new railroad branches is something VTA in Santa Clara is really good at ... and it's been a major fiasco.
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Yeah, I think it's enough of a problem. This really isn't a matter of should we 6-lane it to Duxbury. It is one of the most acutely messed up highways in the state. We just are so tapped out we can barely stay on top of any of our most acute asphalt problems. The breakdown lane travel really is almost a worse cure than the disease when something goes wrong. The lane weaving really does ripple up and down the chain, and that's a problem when 3's choppy flow affects completely unrelated commuters on other roads like 93 and 128. I agree that Braintree Split and spacing out the 37/Furnace Brook/Burgin exits and associated weaving on each side of the triangle makes a more immediate difference. But the ripples on 3 don't go away unless there's an even 6 lanes well south of Weymouth smoothing out the flow into Braintree. It's still going to flush congestion waves onto the Expressway if 3 is a choppy, choppy ride all the way downstream.

Think about what a revelation the 128 improvements have been (I just rode the newly opened segment a couple weeks ago, and was floored at how much smoother the 1/95/138/24 gauntlet flowed with so many more people staying in line than before). We have to accept that the Expressway really has very little give to do any better than it does. It's going to be critical that the other two legs of the Split triangle get their flow under control to manage the Expressway's low margin for error. 128 add-a-lane is big. Fixing godawful Canton will be big. Fixing the exits in the Split vicinity will be big. 3 add-a-lane will be big.

There's little dispute that it's big. It's all about how we can't pay for big things.


As for transit, well, Plymouth Line growth curve is lookin' just spiffy and I can't see anything related to 3 that's going to take away from its long-term mojo. Be nicer if they could get the TOD near the terminals cranking enough to be less a disappointment, but the intermediate stops and park-and-ride adoption at Kingston are smokin'. If anything it's the ceiling imposed by the Savin Hill single track that's going to rear its ugly head sooner or later for both Plymouth and Middleboro. But we know what a brutally difficult problem that is to solve.

Greenbush's performance sucks, and of course the spoiled brats in those towns have earned a lot of long-lasting enmity. But...really...that line is much more a 3A analogue than 3. Wompatuck State Park chews up most of the intervening distance between the two roads for the shoreline towns, so if there's anyone to fault for clogging 3 instead of using public transit it's West Hingham and Norwell. Cohasset/Nantasket Beach, Scituate, Greenbush...they drive 3A. And probably should be taking more public transit instead of clogging that road.
 
Matthew said:
I-93 south of Boston is considered to be overly congested. And they want to add more cars to that by expanding Route 3? Why?

Is there some consideration about how this fits into the overall picture? Or are they just trying to shove more traffic at I-93 without any care? Widening for the sake of lucrative contracts, likely.
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F-Line makes lots of good points, but it's also worth mentioning that the idea here isn't to funnel more traffic onto I-93. People here often take an overly city-centric view of things.

Boston has lots of jobs, but most Boston-area jobs are in the suburbs. The office parks in Quincy and Braintree are massive employment centers on the South Shore, and many of their employees come from the suburbs are are served by Route 3. Plus you have the redevelopment of Quincy Center that's in progress. Quincy's done a ton to facilitate new economic development, both smart growth wherever it's appropriate and office parks/residential where it isn't. And there's been a ton of great infrastructure improvements in the vicinity of the Braintree split/Burgin Parkway/Quincy Center that will continue to make this growth possible.

I'm fairly sure most if not virtually all of the growth in traffic on Route 3 is to serve the Quincy/Braintree area, and won't make it onto the I-93 at all.

By the way - the Expressway was widened in the 1980's, and it's not likely to be widened again anytime soon. MassDPW used to hate the idea of widening highways beyond eight lanes, and I don't think that's changed despite the two name changes over the last 20 years.
 
Arlington said:
Not always an issue. Toll roads are better at this, with an established, competitive market for Public-private partnership (PPP) and many good examples across the US and around the world to appeal to. The bad PPP examples tend to be from non-road infrastructure like parking meters, airports, and water works. The more exotic, the more no-bid/sweetheart. But this should be OK.

US 3 between Burlington and New Hampshire is a good example of PPP where the builder provided financing and did design-build and the state paid a priced determined in a competitive process.
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But the question is - what value do infrastructure-based PPPs actually add? And the question isn't just whether there's any competitive market, it's about how competitive the market is.

In my view the reason for these types of PPPs is that politicians are afraid to raise taxes, tolls, fees, or any type of revenue whatsoever. So they partner with a private company who does the same thing in a less efficient way and also takes a cut for his profits. But to the politician, this doesn't matter - he gets to say he didn't raise revenue.

I'd like to see politicians tell me that publicly-provided infrastructure is a worthwhile endeavor and a public good, that it's something that we should all pay for, that taxes are the price we pay for living in a civilized society. And I'd like them to figure out the best, most efficient way to pay for something, raise the revenue to do it, and float the bonds they need to. And then contract out the construction, overseen by the state, and once the construction's done the state maintains it.

Everything's public, everything's out in the open, subject to laws and procedures that have been vetted for decades, and it's a model that works and always has worked. Why change it, other than out of cowardice or profit motive?

If anything, I'd like to see things move in the opposite direction, a la the Route 128 widening. Break up mega-projects into smaller, competitively bid projects. You get the potential for a lot more bidders on each project, and it's much easier to measure each company's performance against one another than it is when you just have one bidder and one contract a la the Big Dig. The T could do the same thing with bus routes.
 
massmotorist said:
But the question is - what value do infrastructure-based PPPs actually add?
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Realistic costs estimates and timetables. Eg. We started the Big Dig thinking it was a $2b project, not the $14b it became. Business people and politicians both like lowballing estimates, but I think politicians are worse.

Risk-sharing on overruns. It is really nice to wipe out dumb Equity investors if costs run over, while a state-owned screwup either raises taxes or borrowing costs.

A Design-Build-Operate mentality. For whatever reason, governments tend to underbuild their roads (pavement too thin) and undermaintain their facilities (preferring pounds of cure to ounces of prevention).
 
cden4 said:
For the sections of Route 3 with one fewer lane, would it be possible to narrow the shoulders and travel lanes (along with reducing the speed limit) to make room for an additional lane, as described in this recent article?
http://www.uctc.net/access/41/access41_slowerfaster.shtml
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That is a great article. I see applying this on 93 / Southeast Expressway, whose noise/fumes would be lessened.

If you squeezed a better reversible pair HOT lanes out of it it would be a huge win, especially if you could extend them on the north to the Big Dig's HOV/Airport lanes at Albany St. On the south, tie them to a full pair of HOTs on a rebuilt Route 3. All you forego is reverse-commute HOT from the city outward, and it would be a big win for commuter bus (like the Logan Express).
 
Arlington said:
Realistic costs estimates and timetables. Eg. We started the Big Dig thinking it was a $2b project, not the $14b it became. Business people and politicians both like lowballing estimates, but I think politicians are worse.
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This is a good point. Bechtel repeatedly told State officials that the cost of the Big Dig was going to end up around $14B. Public officials directed Bechtel to adjust their estimates to make the cost come in lower. It's more difficult to slip unrealistically low estimates past a bank that's financing the project, than past a bureaucrat.

Arlington said:
Risk-sharing on overruns. It is really nice to wipe out dumb Equity investors if costs run over, while a state-owned screwup either raises taxes or borrowing costs.
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Except the "dumb equity investors" will either stop investing (PPP goes away) or demand higher returns (toll prices go up on future projects). Risk should be allocated to the party that is best able to manage it. In most cases that's the State.

Arlington said:
A Design-Build-Operate mentality. For whatever reason, governments tend to underbuild their roads (pavement too thin) and undermaintain their facilities (preferring pounds of cure to ounces of prevention).
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I agree on the maintenance part of this statement but I don't think your right on the building standards. My company does work for both the private and public and public standards are almost always as high or higher than the private sector.
 
AmericanFolkLegend said:
I agree on the maintenance part of this statement but I don't think your right on the building standards. My company does work for both the private and public and public standards are almost always as high or higher than the private sector.
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Well, focusing on limited-access roads, their was an old study that compared US to EU roadbuilding. In EU the builders had to provide warranties or be the operators and so ended up pouring concrete thicker and producing roads with lower lifetime costs (while US roads were cheap intially and cost more in the long run). But that's a case that also supports your point as well as mine--the state often owns the road (to your point), but has tied its risks and the private risks together (to my point).
 
This is a great idea. It'll help things clear out sooner in the evening at least.
 
cden4 said:
For the sections of Route 3 with one fewer lane, would it be possible to narrow the shoulders and travel lanes (along with reducing the speed limit) to make room for an additional lane, as described in this recent article?

http://www.uctc.net/access/41/access41_slowerfaster.shtml
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That is a horrible idea. And, worse, an already discredited fad from 30-50 years ago that we've been trying to undo in this state ever since. Re-striping in place with no real widening CREATED tons of unsafe expressways, parkways, and arterials. We've been spending billions fixing that lunacy ever since and trying to restore real sightlines, accel/decel lanes, regulation lane widths, and shoulders for all those overstressed, overspeed roads that were haphazardly retrofitted. This is not a trend that deserves to come back in vogue. There's a damn good reason why it fell out of favor.

Adding a lane while reducing the road's resiliency to absorb a disruption makes the problems worse, not better. Lack of regulation shoulders and too-narrow operational lanes around curves is why the SE Expressway locks solid if there's a single accident or breakdown. Narrow lanes in general are scary...you feel safe driving on Storrow with its itty-bitty lane width? How 'bout when passing an F-350 pickup with tools hanging off the side? And nobody obeys the posted speed limit there. You can't just post new signs, re-stripe, and expect everybody to ratchet it down a notch when the road design still through-and-through cuts every corner to encourage expressway speeds. That didn't work with the Bowker/Storrow WB merge misadventures...a re-stripe designed to traffic calm that instead did absolutely nothing other than reinstate one of the scariest merges in the city.

Want a lower speed limit...the road has to have design features for traffic calming. You aren't getting that by re-striping an interstate-standard expressway to cripple safety clearances. People are still gonna do 70. They're just going to crash into each other more often and cause more backups when there's no shoulder whatsoever.


Road work on other highways to widen the shoulders and widen substandard-width lanes has done wonders to increase flow and resiliency. Even when it adds no operational lanes. For example, look at the work they're doing right now on 128 in Waltham and Lexington...they're replacing the few feet of useless median grass with a jersey barrier and adding a few feet more of shoulder space. No capacity increases, but they can clear the road much faster in a disablement and it's much less white-knuckle driving. And...yes, the state troopers actually have some operating room to ticket speeders all hours of the day and respond quickly to accidents. As do construction crews to tie down their vehicles outside of work hours without closing a lane or busting out the temp barriers for a lane-shift.

3 is not getting a parkway downgrade. Much less a cosmetic downgrade nobody will obey. It's an expressway. Fix it as an expressway. It's that critical...and yes, when it's that critical there is nothing cheap-and-easy about it. Solve problems. Don't kick the can and create new ones.
 
F-Line and AmericanFolkLegend said everything I would have said, so I have nothing to add other than... they're completely right.

The lane narrowing idea is terrible, government building standards are generally higher than private ones, Bechtel got the cost estimates right and then the Weld administration lied about them (with FHWA complicity), the state is the best one to bear risks in construction overruns because the private sector will price in risk (and if the overrrun is enough, ultimately they might go bankrupt and saddle the state with the costs anyway), etc.
 
I could have sworn about 5 years ago the state said this project was approved, in fact although I thought it was a strange route I thought that little path cut through the median around weymouth was part of it (even has a new concrete bridge) and the whole big crossover in overpass area around the rt 3 228/Hingham St was also part of it. Anyone know what the purpose of either of these are?
 
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Could be a remnant of a temporary roadway during construction/reconstruction, or a remnant of the old highway which has been left to crumble while the new, more "compliant" highway runs alongside in the present day.

The pathway in the second pic could be utility. Like a natural gas pipeline or something.
 
BostonUrbEx said:
Could be a remnant of a temporary roadway during construction/reconstruction, or a remnant of the old highway which has been left to crumble while the new, more "compliant" highway runs alongside in the present day.

The pathway in the second pic could be utility. Like a natural gas pipeline or something.
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I believe it goes to one of the pumping stations for the municipal water system in Weymouth. The source is in North Weymouth. There's another pump located inside the exit 16 interchange.

As for the road itself, I think the biggest problem is the lane drop on the southbound side. This signage ahead of the drop is almost non-existent--I've always thought that a couple of good signs a mile or so ahead, even as close as just after the exit 16 interchange, would at least prepare people for the lane drop and get them to move over ahead of the event.
 
The big crossover was used during a bridge-reconstruction project which I remember from the late '90s or early 00's. It had a temporary "tinkertoy" bridge (now removed) parallel to the bridges that were reconstructed on either side. The concrete piers for the temporary bridge are visible, and I assume it was cheaper to leave the stuff than tear it up.
bosma said:
Anyone know what the purpose of either of these are?
rt 32.jpg
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