Rt 128 Interchanges

DZH22 said:
Skimmed through, but I'm still confused by the picture in Post 28 because the highway doesn't appear to be buried there like the one in Post 33. Maybe that's supposed to be an overpass and it just isn't obvious?
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I believe it is, it's just the rendering flatness and lack of shadow around the overpass that make it appear almost at grade.
 
DZH22 said:
It seems like something better suited for Route 2 (west of 95) or maybe Route 9, as opposed to the more major interstates. Adding traffic lights to 90, 93, or 95 would be the death of the highways. (yes, I know 90 had the tollbooths, but red lights would still be worse)
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Diverging diamond is something that you would use for a freeway to arterial interchange. It's more car efficient than a standard diamond interchange (local example). That said, they're heinous for pedestrian/bike users on the arterial, so really not appropriate for urban areas if you care at all about anything but car throughput.

The plan for 93/95 in Woburn was to combine the exit departures from 95 into a single 2 lane ramp roughly where the first exit currently is. Then it splits again and the "left" from 95N to 93N and from 95S to 93S flies over, joins the entrance from the other direction, and merges as one. Changing those two ramps to a left flyover deletes all 4 weave zones from the interchange.

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Is that a... left lane flyover exit from 95 SB onto Washington Street? Generally I can't stand left exits, but it would go a long way towards ameliorating the Washington Street overpass traffic to the Cummings office parks.
 
roy_mustang76 said:
Is that a... left lane flyover exit from 95 SB onto Washington Street? Generally I can't stand left exits, but it would go a long way towards ameliorating the Washington Street overpass traffic to the Cummings office parks.
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I think that is a flyover entrance ramp to 95N, and another ramp to the 93N and S flyovers.
 
I seem to recall the abutters in Stoneham pitching an epic fit about the flyovers being an eyesore.
 
roy_mustang76 said:
Is that a... left lane flyover exit from 95 SB onto Washington Street? Generally I can't stand left exits, but it would go a long way towards ameliorating the Washington Street overpass traffic to the Cummings office parks.
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No. There aren't any left-turn exits in this proposal. I think the one you're seeing is a flyover on-ramp from Washington Street to NB Route 128.
 
RandomWalk said:
I seem to recall the abutters in Stoneham pitching an epic fit about the flyovers being an eyesore.
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That's kinda dumb on their part because by the time the flyovers are high in the air (40 feet or so), they are nowhere near any homes. Typical NIMBY paranoia.
 
RandomWalk said:
I seem to recall the abutters in Stoneham pitching an epic fit about the flyovers being an eyesore.
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All 40 feet of it???

Call me skeptical that Kelly Nissan has that much pull. They and BJ's would be literally the only ones that side of the town line to see it.
 
I vaguely recall that this plan is scaled down significantly from the original plan, which had higher ramps and more of them, because of opposition from the neighbors.
 
ceo said:
I vaguely recall that this plan is scaled down significantly from the original plan, which had higher ramps and more of them, because of opposition from the neighbors.
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I'm not sure how that's possible. The only quadrant where any elevations are even visible is the SW corner in Woburn where the Washington ramps interact, which is as before: Kelly Nissan + BJ's + Ironwood Batting Cages and nothing more. Maybe 1 office building and the Chick-fil-a if they absolutely clearcut mow down the tree line in the process. But still: (1) not a one of those businesses gives a shit, (2) not a one of those businesses has the political huevos to jam up the public process even if they wanted to, and (3) ALL of them do way more business the less traffic sucks balls at the Washington exit so logically are more likely to be in vociferous support. The residences on the NW (Woburn) and SE (Stoneham) sides get the ramps moved further from their homes because of the compacting of the ex-cloverleaf, and are already so far from the centerlines that it's not physically possible to see the flyover elevations. They get outright improved residential experience. The NE corner (Reading) maybe has 4 homes that can even see the highway when the trees are stripped bare and won't be seeing their ramp geometry change much...but are also likewise so far from the centerlines where the flyovers cross with such a thick tree berm that it's physically impossible they'd see/hear anything additional unless the tree line were completely clear-cut.

I get it that some assholes gonna NIMBY no matter what, but what does the oppositional coded language really griping about here??? It sure isn't sourced from anything remotely rooted in project impacts. Like...is this some bizarro-world tax thing about "we have to keep the godawful traffic or else mortgages are going to get more expensive here"??? I mean...these aren't the most intrepid townie seats-o'-gov't you're dealing with in any of the 3 towns, but that's absolutely a bluff you call because there's too few potential irritants here with too little to back up their claims. Or is this just the retconning cloak being thrown around to help explain why the state has run so hard away from ever trying to fund the project???
 
Charlie_mta said:
That's kinda dumb on their part because by the time the flyovers are high in the air (40 feet or so), they are nowhere near any homes. Typical NIMBY paranoia.
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They are probably whining about it because, well, that's what they do over there. As F-Line mentioned, though, they don't have a leg to stand on because the flyovers will actually improve their sightlines (except for the businesses, who don't give a damn about their sightlines and will be all for their employees being more reliably on time). If the state actually cares to make this happen, the NIMBYs are unlikely to be able to block this in any meaningful way.
 
The towns may be trying to extract some sweet “compensation” like fixing up a park or similar.
 
The really early proposals called for a more 'properly' engineered version of what we ended up with, IIRC, which required the state to acquire some property. I believe that was most of the uproar, and the height/visuals seemed like more of a backup, but still BS, argument.

Here's an article I could find from 2012, updated in 2014, which, they say it was penned in to start between 2026 and 2030 and cost half a billion dollars, but at the time was potentially going to move up a little following some transportation bills getting signed. 8 years later and it seems none of those bills helped here.

http://homenewshere.com/middlesex_east/article_e55f7c2c-d0f4-11e1-9754-0019bb2963f4.html
 
I can't think of a more obvious area in the state for highway improvements than the 93-128 interchange and the lane drop on 128.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
I'm not sure how that's possible. The only quadrant where any elevations are even visible is the SW corner in Woburn where the Washington ramps interact, which is as before: Kelly Nissan + BJ's + Ironwood Batting Cages and nothing more. Maybe 1 office building and the Chick-fil-a if they absolutely clearcut mow down the tree line in the process. But still: (1) not a one of those businesses gives a shit, (2) not a one of those businesses has the political huevos to jam up the public process even if they wanted to, and (3) ALL of them do way more business the less traffic sucks balls at the Washington exit so logically are more likely to be in vociferous support. The residences on the NW (Woburn) and SE (Stoneham) sides get the ramps moved further from their homes because of the compacting of the ex-cloverleaf, and are already so far from the centerlines that it's not physically possible to see the flyover elevations. They get outright improved residential experience. The NE corner (Reading) maybe has 4 homes that can even see the highway when the trees are stripped bare and won't be seeing their ramp geometry change much...but are also likewise so far from the centerlines where the flyovers cross with such a thick tree berm that it's physically impossible they'd see/hear anything additional unless the tree line were completely clear-cut.
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I don't know the extent of any neighborhood opposition to this plan. The original plan from 2002 was a full-stack directional interchange that would have involved taking 77 homes and a bunch of businesses.
 
That 2002 proposal looks like the massive stacked interchanges you see in places like Houston and Los Angeles.

Hopefully the H3-OS eventually gets built. That's a nice layout.
 
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mass88 said:
That 2002 proposal looks like the massive stacked interchanges you see in places like Houston and Los Angeles.

Hopefully the H3-OS eventually gets built. That's a nice layout.
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I think the only full-on conventional stack interchange in New England (albeit only half-used) is I-84/CT 9 in Farmington, CT.
 
last I heard and this was years ago now, was they want to do the interchange work in phases. 2 smaller phases and then the major interchange project. I believe Phase 1 was going to be replacement of the Washington Street Bridge over I-95, Phase 2 was going to be the widening of I-95NB from I-93 to Rte 28 and then Phase 3 was going to be the major interchange rebuild.
 
matredsoxfan5 said:
last I heard and this was years ago now, was they want to do the interchange work in phases. 2 smaller phases and then the major interchange project. I believe Phase 1 was going to be replacement of the Washington Street Bridge over I-95, Phase 2 was going to be the widening of I-95NB from I-93 to Rte 28 and then Phase 3 was going to be the major interchange rebuild.
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That would make sense - do it in two phases. Wondering what the timeline is on these two projects being completed in the coming years?
 
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