Has an additional highway to Boston ever been considered? (Lowell: houses, construction)

[bruin086]

I absolutely hate 93 south of Boston at rush hour and was wondering if the state has ever considered adding another route into the city to alleviate traffic. For example, see the attachment. Those coming from Route 3 could take 93 into the city but those coming from 95 could take this new route.

Has anything ever been discussed? Do you think there's any possibility in the next 25 years that an additional route south of the city is built?

[jayrandom]

Have you never been to the 95-93 interchange? The original plan was pretty much what you've drawn. It was opposed by residents then and abandoned.

Southwest Corridor (Boston) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In short, that's not going to happen.

[mdovell]

I don't know if anything has been discussed but I highly doubt we'd have another highway. Since government policies want urbanization that alone discourages cars. Furthermore to get the right of way and eminent domain of those would be pretty weak. Eminent domain is supposed to be if there's really no other viable choice like an original bridge or road and of course the Quabbin way back in the day. Yes 93 south at rush hour does take awhile but the solution is probably is telecommutting, taking the commuter rail, living in boston or finding work somewhere else.

One idea that is being floated about in Texas (austin maybe or was it Houston?) is that they'd have gondolas across skyscrapers because the cost is much cheaper than building any rail or bus line.

[miu]

No. Not in recent years at least. And where would you put it? And do you realize how many houses and other buildings would have to be purchased by the state and knocked down in order to make this new highway?

Search for details of building the Mass Pike into Boston. What a huge pain in the @ss that was to build.

But very slowly, some highways are getting wider and more lanes added. But again, it's a very slow and expensive process. Especially because those are non-toll roads. And I don't think that there is a priority for our state government to make it easier to drive into or through Boston. They'd rather people make other plans, like public transportation or Amtrak or Greyhound, just anything but use their private vehicles. And universities like MIT are also under pressure to make their students and workers take public transportation to their campus. They are under a mandate to cap the number of parking spaces in their parking facilities.

[goyguy]

Are you serious?
There were plans afoot, starting in the late 1950's, to ram I-95 through the Blue Hills and carve up Boston, then do the same thing on the North Shore except with the Lynn Woods being ripped asunder. Not only that, an "Inner Belt" expressway was proposed to link 93 with the planned 95 - it was to start in the South End, loop from there through Cambridge, then rejoin 93 in Somerville near Sullivan Square.
The Tobin Bridge was constructed to be the starting point of what would've been known as the Northeast Expressway (wonder how they came up with that one?) Hundreds of homes and businesses were destroyed to clear the way for that road as well as the similarly unimaginatively named Southwest Expressway. Driving along 93, north of town you can see the place on the elevated stretch where the Inner Belt would have connected. The initial, and only, portion of that particular highway ever built was reconstructed into the Mass. Ave interchange - which is why those "exit ramps" are so wide. The remainder got renamed Melnea Cass Blvd. And the MBTA/Amtrak rail lines today follow what had been intended to be the path of 95. That's why the adjoining green space with a bike trail is called Southwest Corridor Park. If it weren't for finding a way to make better use of that swath of territory the Orange Line would probably still be screeching along el tracks through Dudley Square.
The next time you merge onto 95 south from 128 (or vice versa), notice that there's a very short section of what looks to be like a highway which extends beyond the interchange. If the construction plans had been realized 95 would've followed that short section and gone on all the way into the city from there.
A great deal of destruction ("urban removal") went on to make 93 happen, and the scars left from initiating the Inner Belt and looking to route 95 through Boston will never completely heal. Large chunks of the South End, the Fenway, Cambridge, and East Somerville would have been leveled. Noise and air pollution would've gotten considerably worse.
"Another route into the city to alleviate traffic" would be buses, the Red Line, and commuter rail.

[bUU]

There clearly needs to be a balance between the needs for infrastructure and the needs to respect the environment that already exists. Unfortunately, Boston chose to ignore both, by refusing to build I-95 as pretty-much a straight-shot from Westwood to Peabody, refusing to build the inner loop, and refusing to build US-3 from Burlington into the city -- yet still building up a population that the existing infrastructure (I-93 and MA-128) couldn't support. Another case of insisting on having one's cake and eating it too. Massachusetts could have devoted all the massive resources it has expended on making up for its refusal to deal with reality over the decades into moving substantial amounts of Boston business to Lowell or Lawrence (or Fall River, I suppose), where such infrastructure work would have been generally accepted.

[Mark-faf]

This all came to a head in the late 70's when Michael Dukakis was governor. He was aware of the pollution increasing in the inner cities, and the public outcry as the Mass Pike in the 60's and later the Southwest Expressway, (I-95) and the "Inner Belt", projects started but never completed, caused many homes and businesses to be torn down. The land was forcibly "bought" by the state government for the highway projects by a process called "eminent domain". This became a loathed phrase in the Boston area, right along with "forced busing".

Dukakis' revolutionary, at the time, idea was to convince the federal highway department to allow federal funds earmarked for roads to be used for public transportation projects. Since then the MBTA and commuter rail has greatly expanded. But the single biggest highway project in the city's history, the more recent "Big Dig" I-93 tunnel through Boston, has made a huge improvement in traffic all around the metro area.

Boston never was and will never be a city built for cars. Los Angeles was, and has tons of freeways, try their traffic on for size.

[gdbuick]

I think it's safe to say now nothing will ever be done to install new highways as the land is gone. However, they could make huge improvements over existing on/off interchanges by building up over existing highways like they have done in downtown Austin, Texas for example. You can travel the upper level to bypass the city while the lower level allows access points to the city. The big dig did help in that regards to downtown. Many of the on/off ramps in Texas build large upward ramps over existing highways to flow traffic in a sensible direction. Designs like that could help eliminate the senseless traffic flow patterns we have at the intersections of 93/128, 495/93 and 128/3 intersection by Burlington Mall and would be much safer. Building new ramps to flow traffic sensibly would help shorten everyone’s commute time drastically and be earth friendlier. Of course getting rid of the Mass Pike tolls would help too but that's a whole another issue.

[miu]

It isn't going to help rush hour traffic by making it easier to get into Boston because once there, all those extra vehicles still have to navigate the narrow city streets and into parking lots.

[bUU]

Originally Posted by gdbuick

and 128/3 intersection by Burlington Mall

No chance. That would require taking the land at two corners of that intersection that have recently been turned-over and significant investments are being made to improve those plots. A third corner is perhaps the only remaining profitable big box store in Middlesex County. I'm sure that just on economic impact grounds, they won't be able to take any of that land.