FOREST HILLS—After months of delay and speculation, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) has decided that the Casey Overpass will be replaced by an at-grade street network and not a new bridge.
The decision was confirmed to the Gazette today by MassDOT spokesperson Michael Verseckes. Community meetings are slated for later this month.
“[The community] process has led us to determine that the at-grade alternative reconnects the neighborhood, provides more open space, incorporates more design elements that are pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly, and allows for more efficient bus movements through the area,” MassDOT Secretary Richard Davey said in a statement.
State Rep. Liz Malia first told the Gazette about the decision, after she was herself informed of the decision on Tuesday afternoon.
“It’s not great news, as far as I’m concerned,” Malia said. “They said they will do their best…There’s a lot of work to be done, whatever happens.”
A Working Advisory Group (WAG) meeting has been scheduled for March 20 at the State Lab. WAG meetings are open to the public, though the public is not expected to participate. A community meeting will be scheduled for the end of March.
A 25 percent design is expected by September. MassDOT expects construction to begin in October 2013 and finish by October 2016.
The decision announcement was originally scheduled for mid-December. It was postponed to mid-January after elected officials, led by Malia, requested a delay in the decision amid community controversy.
The decision was then rescheduled for late February, though MassDOT also missed that date.
The at-grade option is projected to expand New Washington Street to six lanes. It is expected to cost $52 million and includes roughly $20 million in improvements and MBTA station upgrades not included in the bridge option. If not covered by the Casey project, those amenities and improvements would have to come from MassDOT’s already-tight budget.
According to the design team, both a replacement bridge or a new street network without a bridge would handle projected traffic increases well, and both would improve on the current street network.
The Casey Overpass is the State Route 203 bridge over Washington Street and Hyde Park Avenue at the Forest Hills T Station. The aging bridge must be demolished in coming years.
Update: This story has been updated to include MassDOT comments and additional information. The WAG meeting date has been changed.
View Comments (20)
Hope all your enthusiasm turns out to be correct. The ugly overpass was definitely coming down- a improvement. Three noisy, smelly, bumper to bumper lanes of rush hour traffic are not necessarily going to make Forest Hills an attractive area for commercial development.
YellowRex argues against improved auto access by citing "If you build it they will come." He ignores the people who already live in Mattapan, the fact that their public transportation options are lousy and that the MBTA is planning to make them worse.
Seriously... If Liz Malia really wanted to help this process should could have commissioned an economic and community development study to accompany the state's traffic and transportation work. What are the opportunities for positive, community-friendly growth and development around the Forest Hills train station? I think the opportunities here are enormous, especially if you don't have a gigantic, ugly, noisy, polluting highway overpass running through the neighborhood.
But let's not wait for an elected official to get a clue. This is what we need to be talking about, folks! Let's talk about it.
Fantastic. Great news for Forest Hills and surrounding neighborhoods. This thing was truly a '50s era highway engineering abomination. It never should have been built in the first place. It's great to see it coming down.
Now, who is going to run against Liz Malia? It's time for leadership with a real vision for the future.
Liz Malia - seriously? what did you add to this process except delays and some "expert" dude who could only disagree with the Federal traffic assumptions and couldn't find fault with any other part of the process?? Forest Hills needed a workable solution - no option is perfect - you know what else Forest Hills needs? more small businesses to attract more residents. why don't you commission a study on that - or better yet resign and actually take a risk and become a small business owner in JP. bet that won't happen...
The new bridge design would not "divide the neighborhood" any more than a 6 lane surface roadway. In fact, the bridge was going to be located over a roadway. I can't wait till the silent majority sees these "bow ties" and other features the traffic engineers came up with to get an overwelming number of vehicles through surface intersections. These "bow ties" prohibit left turns. How many cyclists will be using the "bow ties"...riding straight through 2 major intersections, taking a signized u-turn, then through another major intersection, and then finally taking a right turn at another major intersection, which will assuredly not allow right on red. Just to avoid a simple left turn.
Thank God, sanity prevailed! Now we can move on to the good part, which is using the community meetings at the 25% and 75% design phases to make sure cyclists, pedestrians, and transit users are *prioritized* over pass-through car commuters that add nothing to the neighborhood except pollution and noise.
Hurrah to the WAG, to the advocacy groups, and to everyone who put their time and effort into this project to save us from yet another 50's era highway project designed to "slay" congestion (as if that's ever even possible!) and protect us from Soviet nuclear bombs.
Bad idea, sorry. I get the open space argument but I am one of many who drive it every day. Now I will be at-grade with my SUV..... idling at a red light.
I drive through there every day as well - I already idle out in front of forest hills at three different lights, and it's currently a complete mess under the overpass because of the crazy on-ramps. maybe they'd improve this with the new bridge, but as a driver I prefer the at-grade option.
Fantastic news. This was the obvious decision for so many reasons. I have complete faith that this will not make traffic any worse, and it might even improve it.
Good news. But now let's see if we can: reconfigure all the unused space in the area to provide development parcels for small retail maybe with housing above and usable miniparks; improve 39 bus operations and passenger amenities; accommodate cyclists on all the roadways, even if there is a path/sidewalk adjacent to the roadway.
Huzzah! Such great news.