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Bad weather delays completion of Forest Hills roadwork by a couple weeks, but Mattapan-bound drivers face new lanes today
By adamg on Fri, 12/29/2017 - 9:37am
MassDOT reports it now expects the road sections of the Arborway/Forest Hills project to be finished by mid-January, rather than, oh, today.
At 10 a.m. today, workers were to adjust "traffic logistics" to shift eastbound drivers on the Arborway to the new, permanent alignment between South and Washington streets.
Westbound drivers will now have to wait until mid-January, barring a blizzard or something, to get into their final traffic lanes, the state says. State officials had originally hoped to have all the roadwork finished by Monday.
The schedule of these operations has been impacted and determined by ongoing winter weather conditions as well as coordination and accommodations with key stakeholders.
The state adds that once the new eastbound configuration is unleashed:
- Eastbound traffic will be discontinued on New Washington Street.
- Eastbound left turns to go from the Arborway to Washington Street northbound (towards the Green Street orange line station) will be prohibited at the intersection of Arborway/Washington Street.
Drivrs who want to get onto Washington Street towards English High will instead have to continue through the intersection and use the new median U-turn, then turn right onto Washington.
In mid-January, or thereabouts, westbound traffic will be blocked on New Washington and you won't be able to turn left onto South Street (which turns into Washington Street) anymore. Instead, you'll have to go straight through the intersection, then take the new median U-turn and turn right to get to Roslindale.
Also:
MBTA buses will have a dedicated lane to turn left from the Arborway westbound onto Washington Street southbound (towards Hyde Park Avenue) to access the lower busway at Forest Hills Station.
All other vehicles will be prohibited from this lane during peak commuting hours. An electric sign mounted on the traffic signal will indicate when this lane is legally available to general traffic.
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Comments
When will the traffic improve?
Does this mean the traffic is slated to get better with this completion? If I recall correctly, during the design process, it was stated that it would only add 30 seconds to ones commute particularly when going east or west bound. Seeing as it adds 10 plus minutes, are we going to see this actually improve the area? It used to take only 30 seconds or so to navigate. I don't think I'm being so negative as to not believe this completion will shave another 9 minutes or so off of the commute time.
Traffic will improve when
Traffic will improve when drivers start following lane markers, cease double parking, and stop blocking the box. Be the change you want to see.
Well,
Well I for one do not block the box nor do I double park. I also have not seen anyone double parking on the east/west bound lanes at all. And I go through this area everyday. Blocking the box, although it does happen occasionally, is not the issue. The issue is that the intersections just can not handle the amount of traffic that goes through that area. We keep hearing that we should wait until it's done. Well the thing is, is that there are as many lanes now as there will be at completion of this project. The only thing that will change is some alignment and actually adding more lights to this area.
I remember during the design phase of this project and hearing, not only about the extra 30 seconds at most it would take to navigate, but of the prospect of "traffic calming". This term always strikes me as funny. We use these methods to calm traffic under the logic that people will realize that the traffic it causes is good for them, as well as the area, and change their ways. What this fails to take into account is that when one intentionally tries to slow traffic through certain areas, you end up seeing a rise in speeding once they have finally broke free of the congestion. You end up seeing more aggressive driving from operators that don't normally drive that way (blocking the box, unsafe lane changes, etc.). And before anyone says it, I'm not speaking for my driving. I'm not perfect, but my anecdotal evidence can be seen in this area everyday. This type of infrastructure changes cause exactly what they try to prevent We should just start calling it for what it is: traffic frustrating measures. Because that's all it accomplishes.
When the buses get permanent
When the buses get permanent dedicated lanes and you ride the bus or a bike.
And that's why
I've been a critic of this project.
Why?
Because it's lacking permanent dedicated bus lanes?
Or because you don't understand induced demand and believe that there are ways to reduce traffic without actually reducing traffic?
No
It's the sanctimoniousness of some people who were oh to eager to see the bridge go away.
As the other guy notes, the claim was that the increased travel times should be no more than a minute. Now, after experiencing commute times going up 9 minutes, he is told to ditch his car and ride a bike. Basically, my claims many years ago that an at-grade solution will mean more traffic have been vindicated.
In case you didn't know, induced demand is when roads are widened, which creates more vehicle trips thereby creating traffic resulting in no actual improvements. This is the opposite of that.
The point of the project wasn
The point of the project wasn't to make traffic flow better, it was to do something about a decrepit bridge, and in the process make better bike infrastructure and place-making. So asking when traffic will get better is the wrong question.
If you are so worried, it opened up more biking infrastructure, and another project is putting in transit/bike infra, so now those options are more appealing than they were before. Car traffic is not going to get "better", so here are ways to avoid it.
Car traffic is going to get worse due to this
Which is what the project planners said would NOT happen. The claim was 30 second delays at most. The engineers lied and made up numbers, like they're doing with West Station.
But yeah, let’s make people bike from Mattapan to the LMA to take their kids to their doctor’s appointments at Children’s because cars are evil. Forcing people to conform to your way of thinking is the best way to go.
(edited due to a typo, and hopefully the only one.)
We should look to speed up
We should look to speed up mass transit. It should be so fast and convenient that most people think of it as the default option, unless they have an important reason to drive.
Putting buses in a 10-minute traffic jam that didn't use to exist does the opposite.
where is this posted at MassDOT?
I'd love to see if they have a drawing showing the lane configurations. I looked at the Casey Overpass project but didn't see this up to date info.
Thanks
They e-mailed reporters a small map
Which you can gaze upon, but you'll need really good eyes - or imagination.
There are a bunch of copies
There are a bunch of copies of this image floating around the internet that are a lot more legible than that:
http://www.jamaicaplainnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Screen-Shot-2...
http://bostoncyclistsunion.org/wp-content/upLoads/2015/04/Casey100West21...
Same crap going on with the
Same crap going on with the Longfellow Bridge. The weekend Red Line shittle buses were supposed to be done on December 17, but they're extending them another two weekends because of work delays.
https://www.mbta.com/longfellow
"Scheduled construction work was cancelled on November 18-19 due to a protest, and on December 9-10 due to inclement weather. Work will be completed over 2 additional weekends in January."
Awesome Morning
-- Drive down Washington northbound to Forest Hills to drop off.
-- Kiss & Ride moved a couple of weeks ago to closer to intersection of Arborway & South.
-- Pull passed bus exit to Kiss & Ride.
-- Kiss & Ride full of construction vehicles. No place to pull in.
-- Stop in traffic, pull over as best you can, let person off.
-- Traffic was barely able to get by.
-- Traffic cleared and was able to get back into lane to get out of there.
-- Awesome planning and construction area control.
-- No way for anyone to know this was all blocked.
So regardless of any improvements, past, present, or future... you need to be able to fly by the seat of your pants down there... daily. And at this point, likely forever.