HIGHWAY PROJECTS GET NEW SCRUTINY
Author: Anthony Flint, GLOBE STAFF
 

WESTWOOD - The long-awaited widening of Route 128 finally began this fall, with bulldozers and backhoes rumbling around the median at the Route 1 bridge.

The project, creating a fourth lane in each direction between Wellesley and Randolph, at a cost of $150 million to $200 million, has a role model of sorts: the $375 million widening of the once-scenic Route 3 from Burlington to the New Hampshire line, set to open to drivers next month.

But while these highway-widening projects are cheered by commuters and most town and business leaders, they may be the last of their kind.

State transportation planners are questioning whether expanding lanes solves congestion in the long term. They are also fretting about costs and worry that better highways will encourage more spread-out development.

The backtrack on highway-widening comes just as the proposed $180 million widening of Route 3 from Weymouth to Duxbury, in a stretch notoriously clogged with South Shore commuters and Cape-bound drivers, moves toward the next stages of the planning process. State Transportation Secretary Daniel Grabauskas said in an interview that the project - which would make that stretch of road three lanes in each direction - is getting intense scrutiny.

"Adding a lane on Route 3 south is clearly a project that's early enough in the process that we can apply some new principles and make an informed judgment," he said. "We're going to look at a host of things, from environmental impacts, economic development impacts, smart growth, increases in housing, a whole host of issues."

Governor Mitt Romney has ordered that existing transportation infrastructure be repaired before new projects are undertaken, an initiative called "Fix it First." He also wants to see a new set of standards developed for judging all future transportation projects.

The Route 3 north project has prompted deep skepticism about highway widening. Drivers and residents say they hate the fact that so many trees were bulldozed to make way for new lanes in the median, which made the highway three lanes in each direction. Protesters are clamoring for new barriers against noise, opposition is swelling over development proposals linked to the 21-mile expansion, and word surfaced last week that the arduous project had fallen behind schedule.

Even some daily users of the highway system in Eastern Massachusetts say that expanding roads won't solve congestion and indeed may only induce more people to use their cars - a prevailing theory among transportation planners in recent years.

"History shows, widening a road doesn't really solve the problem, long-term. It just adds more traffic - or funnels it along to the next chokepoint," said Adam Gaffin, an editor at Network World, a trade publication based in Southborough, who uses Route 128 to get home to Roslindale.

Any future highway-widening projects will be judged in the context of what other means of travel are available, said Jonathan Carlisle, spokesman for the Executive Office of Transportation and Construction. That will be the case with Route 3 south, he said.

"There has been a lot of development on the South Shore, a lot of people live there who need to get into Boston. But in light of the water transportation there, the two legs of the Old Colony [commuter rail] line, and, by 2006, the Greenbush line, we really have to look at this in the context of existing transit opportunities that are or will be available," Carlisle said.

State Senator Robert L. Hedlund, a Republican from Weymouth, said that "there is going to be a lot of angry legislators" if the Romney administration takes away funding for roadway projects that have been stuck in long queues behind the Big Dig.

"We've had tremendous growth and the road is over-capacity," he said. "Adding a lane will help."

Duxbury Selectman Andre M. Martecchini, however, said that if Route 3 is widened, "people will fill it. If it's seen as easier, people will hop into their cars and go - until it starts to fill up again."

Another unanswered question, he said, is whether the widening could be done in an aesthetically sensitive manner.

"The current Route 3 is a beautiful road," he said. "Making it an extension of the expressway - what's that going to do for the character of the surrounding communities?"

The experience with the Route 3 expansion from Burlington to Tyngsborough has led some residents to become activists, in a suburban version of the anti-highway protesters of the 1970s who stopped the Inner Belt and Southwest Expressway in Boston.

"There's a limit to the problems we can solve with that approach," said Dennis Frenchman, director of the City Design and Development group at MIT, who lives in Lexington where the widened Route 3 is being built close to homes. "In the past, access was the only way we could grow economically. In the future, quality of life, landscape, and place will be more important. We have to find a way to be efficient and maintain a sense of place, or we'll end up like New Jersey or Florida."

Protesters have clamored for more extensive noise barriers and decried plans for a service plaza in Chelmsford. The contractor on the project, Modern Continental, is rewarded for promoting what is called "ancillary development" along the widened roadway.

More bad news for Route 3 north came last week, when the state warned Modern Continental it was falling behind schedule. The schedule and the price of the project is supposed to be fixed under the fast-track construction process known as "design-build," which some lawmakers would like to see used in the Route 128 expansion.

Backers of the Route 128 widening remain upbeat, although they acknowledge that the expansion won't solve congestion problems for very long.

"It's a disturbing highway that doesn't function properly, with huge safety issues because of the use of the breakdown lane at rush hour," said Sherri Walker, director of regional economic development at the Neponset Valley Chamber of Commerce, part of the Route 128 Add-a-Lane Business Coalition.

Adding the lane, which could cost up to $200 million and take six years, according to state estimates, "won't make Route 128 a totally functioning highway, though it will be much better," Walker said. Commuter rail will still need to be encouraged, she said, and a proposal to extend the Orange Line to Route 128 should be revisited.

"The big-picture solution." she said, "is getting cars off the road."

Anthony Flint can be reached at flint@globe.com
 

Caption:
Construction began this fall to widen Route 128 by creating a fourth lane in each direction between Wellesley and Randolph. / GLOBE STAFF PHOTO / TOM LANDERS
PHOTO