I support a bridge replacement option for the Casey Overpass.
I have lived on a street off Hyde Park Avenue across from the Forest Hills T parking lot for 30 years and the traffic has only gotten worse. Hyde Park Ave. is often gridlocked in the morning and at evening rush hours. I have extreme delays just getting onto Hyde Park Ave.
I can’t imagine the drive-over traffic now accommodated by the overpass to be diverted to the surface streets around the Forest Hills Station.
I saw presentations on the two options at the public meeting at the State Lab last week and it definitely seemed that diverting traffic to the surface was the option being pushed by the presenters and some vocal attendees. One presenter told me that with the surface plan, it would take me two minutes to drive from my street to enter the Arborway/Rt. 203 north entrance. It took me 10 minutes that night to just to get to the State Lab—a shorter distance.
I was involved for several years with a committee to examine traffic issues around Forest Hills Station—traffic, signaling, taxis, bus stops, pedestrian crossings—and nothing at all changed. Is the new surface design of the roads somehow going to magically solve all these issues and accommodate an additional 24,000 cars per day? What kind of fool do you think I am to believe that? Will “bow-ties” and no left turns be the magic trick? I have four words for that: Wait ’til it snows.
A bridge replacement with some road widening to allow easier turning, passenger pick-up/drop-off and safer pedestrian crossing seems the logical answer.
People were skeptical of tearing down the old Forest Hills subway station, but the new station with a design that mimics the colors and triangular shapes of the neighboring roofs and lots of glass panes with a minimalist clock tower is a scenic and iconic addition to the area and the City.
We can do it again with a new bridge.
Steve Dudley
Jamaica Plain