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Casey Overpass could start coming down this winter
By adamg on Mon, 10/27/2014 - 10:24pm
Clayton Harper reports MassDOT last week awarded a contract worth nearly $60 million to Barletta Heavy Division of Canton to tear down the Casey Overpass in Forest Hills and replace it with a series of surface roads.
Harper says state engineers want the work started ASAP, partly because a winter teardown will minimize the effects of all that dust and noise on nearby residents, who will mostly have their windows shut, and partly because they're concerned the overpass could get all Long Island Bridge and not even make it through the winter without having to be shut down as unsafe.
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Comments
We'll do the work for free!
We'll do the work for free!
Neo JP will finally overrun
Neo JP will finally overrun ye olde roslindale
Fix the surface road FIRST
The westbound roadway that leads down from Shea Circle to Forest Hills station is in miserable condition - almost as bad as the decrepit bridge. What in the world is going to happen when all the bridge traffic descends on that pathetic road? It needs to be fixed now. There's hardly any room for traffic to detour around construction now, but it will be worse when the bridge demolition starts and the snow is flying.
Whatever happens...
It will certainly be an interesting case study!
Traffic on the current
Traffic on the current surface road probably won't be as bad as you expect. I'm guessing the big mess will be on surrounding roads as most of the thru traffic will probably find an alternative route that circumvents Forest Hills.
A new, temporary roadway will be built,
prior to the overpass coming down.
I'll believe that
Only when I see it.
My prediction: when construction starts, traffic going from LMA to Mattapan will have to take a left, a right, then dog ear to the right again to get through Forest Hills.
Never trust the government to do something like this right.
Yes
But the pro-grade people are mostly JP folks who think people in Mattapan should stay in Mattapan and not clot their precious streets.
What?
They can't do this. The city hasn't met the demands of JP residents yet before a vital link that connects multiple parts of the city can be made safe for all. You know, complete greening of the Arborway Yard, the daylighting of Stony Brook, lots of affordable housing, moving all those buses to Roslindale, no drinking in the Arboretum, free range goat paths, no chain stores ever, Liz Malia as pro-consul, organic fusion, Matt O'Malley forced rent preservation for all, subsidized bicycle delivery from Harvest, and the torching of Whole Foods. Only then should a massive hulk of infrastructure owned by all should be remedied.
Free range goat paths!!
What do we want? Goat liberation! When do we want it? Maaaaaaaa!!!
Coughing fit....
Thanks Sally! :)
I would be happy with just
I would be happy with just having the trolley back.
Sad to see it go..
as a resident of Dorchester, at times I am lured to Wegmans in WR and Gary's Liquors with their sale prices. Sadly, removal of this bridge will make those treks just that much further so I won't be shopping there anymore.
Wegmans?
Roche Bros.?
I'm assuming Chestnut Hill which
Kind of maybe brushes against WR in some way.
But come on. I like to go to Russo's in Watertown from my home in JP but you know what? I don't do it often because it takes too damn long. I'm not demanding an overpass that will scoot me over Brookline.
Russo's is 45 minutes by bike from JP
and most of it is a pretty pleasant ride.
Dude , no problemos! Exit
Dude , no problemos! Exit stage left off Morton at American Legion Highway , exit stage right at Cummins highway at firehouse , proceed through Square / Village to destinations ( South street nice bypass via ) .
Cummins highway at firehouse
Hahaha, ya that intersection isn't a cluster f___k!
No, no, no
Look, if people who live in JP are going to complain about residents of other parts of the city blighting their neighborhood by driving through it*, then I'm not going to stand for people driving through Roslindale just to get somewhere else.
* And boy did they ever.
Or even better instead of
Or even better instead of Cummins go via Poplar St and cut over to Washington -> West Roxbury parkway. Less traffic, going through the square can be brutal :)
Poplar to Cornell , all the
Poplar to Cornell , all the way, that's doable. But you don't need to go via the Arborway and Morton street , unless you were stopping into Triple D's for a taste!
I missed the bus this morning
And yes, it was at the Square, but thanks to modern technology, I knew that the next bus was coming in 10 minutes. It's an 18 minute walk for me, so I did the math and decided to give it a shot. In the end, the next bus passed me by the lumber yard and it beat me by about a minute.
No, no one should care about my commuting patterns, but I do advise anyone who takes the bus to Forest Hills from Roslindale and perhaps beyond to take a walk when you have the time and the weather allows to see how long it takes, because you might be joining me in the walk once this project begins.
I hate to be the cynic. I really do. I like to think I'm being a realist.
Is it wrong
that I read this as a nice reason to take a walk? And I know--not always a realistic option for everyone but I often had this experience back in Brighton with the 57--half the time it was just shorter to walk. And once I started biking, I realized how much time I'd been wasting waiting for buses and trains. Sometimes when I look around at the traffic I just think--there is no way to build to accommodate all of these cars. We need to make ways to make walking and biking from place to place easier, safer and more attractive, which doesn't mean than every 74-year-old carrying groceries or dad schlepping three kids to school will do that, but some people will and that will mean fewer cars.
Hubway to the rescue!
If there was a Hubway station in Roslindale, it would be about a 4-5 minute ride to Forest Hills. Unless you are the guy with groceries, there would never be a reason to take a bus from the square to FH ever again.
The only problem with that
The only problem with that idea is that once all 15-20 bikes from the Rozzie station have been ridden to Forest Hills in the morning, everyone else is out of luck. Unless a Hubway van happens to show up in the middle of rush hour to shuttle some bikes back out to Rozzie, and then another 15 or 20 people can get to work.
In other words, while Hubway can get some outliers to work, it *can't* move the majority of people in an inbound-AM/outbound-PM commuting pattern.
Ride your own bike
And park it in the cage at FH station. It will be waiting to take you home again.
And the new bike path on the Washington Street side of the station (as part of the final project) will make that bit of road a heck of a lot safer than it is now.
Hubway vanishes in the winter
They only keep a few stations in Cambridge.
Great reason to take a walk
Which is why I still did it this evening.
However, the old, infirm, etc would have it rough. Also, if we get a decent amount of snow, especially one big one or a few in succession, the sidewalks will be unreachable, sending folk like we onto the street.
Removing that overpass
is a mistake if EPIC proportions. FH is already a clusterfuck, especially by Washington St. Whoever thinks this will result in less congestion and traffic is smoking crack.
Summer Project Paying Off!
Again, super grateful to myself to assigning myself the project of finding a non-Casey Overpass dependent commute during the summer months.
Good luck everyone else!
Enjoy your peaceful travel
Enjoy your peaceful travel now, A couple of hundred folks will be joining you on your secret backroad commute in a few months.