Three road projects slow Route 128 drive
Drive along Route 128 between Needham and Waltham lately, and chances are you’ve found the ride slower and more confusing than usual.
The state Highway Department has three major road projects in progress on Route 128/Interstate 95 between Route 9 in Newton and Wellesley and Winter Street in Waltham.
On Tuesday morning, drivers faced what has become a common sight along the highway - lines of orange construction barrels, signs warning of closed shoulders and exits, and shifting lane markers. Near Winter Street, police directed slow-moving traffic around a chaotic maze of obstacles that included a giant stretch of dirt dotted with earth-moving equipment.
Last week, drivers heading north from Route 135 in Needham to Route 9 in Wellesley during what is typically an easy lunchtime ride found themselves caught in a 2-mile backup because of road work on Route 128.
“It’s the worst we’ve seen it since the work began’’ a few weeks ago, Jeff Larson, general manager of SmartRoute Systems, a traffic monitoring service, said of the snarl last Thursday.
On a 3.8-mile section of the highway northbound between Routes 9 and 20, MassHighway is overseeing a $27 million road resurfacing project, said spokesman Adam Hurtubise.
In addition to milling and resurfacing the roadway, crews are reconfiguring the 20-foot-wide grass median strip into a paved median outfitted with permanent 42-inch-high concrete barriers. Because the grass median is wider than the future paved divider, the extra road space will be used to give drivers in the high-speed lanes more shoulder room.
And with Cambridge’s public water supply so close to that stretch of the highway, three new drainage basins will be installed near the Waltham city line to help capture and treat storm run-off.
Crews have been working between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. to install cement barrier caps there, but the phase of the project should wrap up in the next two weeks, highway officials said.
The project also includes what had been planned as a separate effort to minimize noise from the highway for residents living in Newton Lower Falls near Route 16 and Washington Street. By next summer, D.W. White Construction of Acushnet is expected to have finished building a $6 million concrete sound-absorbing wall on the northbound side of Route 128, ranging in height from 10 feet to 22 feet, said highway officials.
Four bridge decks on the southbound side and two decks on the northbound side are undergoing repairs and repaving, with the work due for completion by month’s end. Bridges over the Charles River and Quinobequin Road will not be repaired during the current projects because of construction work on the sound wall, said Hurtubise.
Once bridge deck repairs are complete, the contractor will move all work to daylight hours and construct the sound-absorbing wall from behind a temporary barrier, he said.
Just up the road in Weston, drivers accustomed to using the Recreation Road bridge over Route 128 will soon be able to resume that route. The bridge has been closed to traffic for more than a year while undergoing a $3.7 million demolition and replacement. Roads approaching the bridge were rebuilt as well.
The project, which started in April 2008, was expected to be done in December, but is now slated to reopen to traffic next week, two months early, said Colin Durrant, deputy secretary for communications for the state Executive Office of Transportation.
In Waltham, a $22 million project is underway to replace the four-lane Winter Street bridge over Route 128 with a seven-lane span. The project is slated for completion in November 2010.
The project began in spring 2005, but progress slowed after the main contractor suffered a financial collapse in late 2006, said Hurtubise.
A second contracting company, McCourt Construction of South Boston, was brought in to resume the project in summer 2007.
Early last month, traffic was diverted off the old bridge to a temporary bridge and part of the new bridge. McCourt plans to demolish part of the old bridge during the last week of this month, after which essential telephone utilities will be moved temporarily, said Hurtubise.
Once the phone cables are moved, more of the old bridge will be dismantled while crews build the portion of the new bridge that will permanently house the cables. Once those are in place, the remainder of the old bridge will be taken down and the new bridge will be finished.
