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This past Spring, Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) presented the preferred alternative for the Rte 79/I-195 Interchange Improvement Project to the public. The alternative consists of removing the elevated Rte 79 viaduct and building an at-grade roadway, utilizing some existing surface streets. The goal of this solution is to lower ramps to street level, and improve connections between Falls River’s downtown and waterfront areas, »

On Wednesday, November 2nd, James D’Agostino and Meghan Vitale of SMTC and William Egloff of NYSDOT answered questions from Post-Standard readers about The I-81 Challenge and the public’s proposed ideas for the future of the highway during a live Q&A session. You can learn more about the Q&A session and read the full transcript on the Post-Standard website.

At the public workshops this past May, attendees had the opportunity to share their ideas about deficiencies on I-81 by writing down any issues they felt needed to be addressed and then placing their notes in the appropriate location on a large map of the I-81 corridor. How do their ideas match up with the traffic, safety, and design deficiencies identified in the NYSDOT’s Technical Memorandum #1: Physical Conditions Analysis? The I-81 Challenge »

As you may be aware, the SMTC and the NYSDOT hosted the first series of public workshops for The I-81 Challenge this past spring.  The I-81 Challenge May 2011 Public Workshops Summary Report summarizes the findings and input from those workshops. You can now download and read the full summary on our website. “Our report makes interesting reading,” said Meghan Vitale, SMTC Principal Transportation Planner. “Community opinion is fairly evenly »

This is the final in a series of posts that explores the three major themes that arose from the visions shared at our first round of public workshops. We’ve already explored the first two major themes in previous blog posts: Rebuild the Viaduct, and Remove the Viaduct . This post explores the third and final major theme: Replace the Viaduct. The major ideas within this theme were to replace the viaduct with a below grade highway – either in a »

This is the fifth post in a series that highlights the public’s opinion about case studies from other cities. To read other posts in this series, click here. In this post we’ll look at Octavia Blvd. in San Francisco. To learn more about that project, click here. Here are a few of the key aspects that workshop attendees liked about this case study: - Promotion of alternative modes of travel – Octavia Boulevard was seen as embracing a “Complete »

This is the second in a series of posts that explores the three major themes that arose from the visions shared at our first round of public workshops. In our last post in this series, we explored the first major theme: Rebuild the Viaduct. This post explores the second theme: Remove the viaduct and replace it with an urban boulevard or other thoroughfare integrated into the local street network.  The primary goals of most of the visions within this »

At the first round of public workshops, members of the public shared many visions for the futures of I-81. In previous posts we’ve shared a few of their individual drawings and ideas. While the ideas that meeting attendees proposed at the workshops varied significantly, the visions generally fell into three major categories: - Rebuild the viaduct - Remove the viaduct and replace it with an urban boulevard - Replace the viaduct with a below grade »