Road Needs Explanation

This proposal seems quite straightforward: create more room to ease the traffic flow along Rte. 1 by letting cars use the breakdown lane in the Norwood/Westwood area.

It is just like the breakdown travel on Rte. 128, where traffic uses the lane to handle the heavy traffic and to allow crews to widen all the Rte. 128 bridges to allow new lanes.

Rte. 1 tangles are in part due to the extra traffic from the Dedham Bridge over Rte. 128 onto Rte. 1.

So the breakdown idea is an easy solution, right?

Maybe it is not that simple. First, the state has to approve any change. That will involve future meetings, not just a quick fix by the towns alone.

There are many factors that play into this short stretch of Rte. 1, such as Legacy Place, the new mall in Dedham on Rte. 128, and the traffic it contributes to the area, or even the setup that the eastbound traffic signals now use, to get shoppers into the Legacy Place from Rte. 1, and what the impact would be.

Dedham should be in on this discussion.

On the eastbound side of Rte. 1, there are two exits onto Everett Street and University Avenue. How will they react to the traffic? The break in the roadway near Lambert’s Plaza that lets drivers change directions is crucial. Will it change? Will it disappear? What will Lambert’s think of the new design, what will the other businesses think?

Of course this breakdown design is not the final version. Someday, according to Norwood General Manager John Carroll, the plan is to turn the existing grass into pavement. The money should come to the top of the state-federal funding sometime in the future. But that raises its own set of questions: when the pavement solution arrives, will the breakdown lanes be abandoned or stay in use? How long will this new Rte. 1 design with the federal-state money look like, exactly?

In much of the Rte. 1 area from University Avenue and Rte. 128, there simply are no grass middle strips; how will the road go in that stretch of highway? Bridges carrying East Street in Westwood and the rail line over Rte.1 cannot be re-engineered to make for another lane. How will that influence the overall plan?

How, in other words, will the reality be in the 2011 and future years?

That will change.

For example, the great job of widening all the Rte. 128 bridges and adding a lane in each direction was proposed in the 1970s to solve that decade's traffic problems, but by the time it was finished, in the 2000s, the traffic woes on the Rte. 128 superhighway were far more difficult.

Likewise, there have been large shopping malls that have grown up over the past few years that have palpable impact: Legacy Place and the Walgreens and CVS developments are in operation, as is the Patriot Place in Foxboro. Both were in the planning stages when all the highway work on Rte. 128 was getting under way. How is everything going; any changes needed?

Sitting in the midst of all this frenzied road and building activity is the monstrous Westwood Station. No, it is not being developed directly on Rte.1, it is off University Avenue near the Westwood train station. But Westwood Station is so vast that it will easily change all the major roads in the area.

If, that is, Westwood Station is ever to happen: it started competing with Legacy Place and Patriot Place for key stores in its complex and has gone nowhere in the past few years. So lots of top stores are spoken for.

This year, 2011, was supposed to be Westwood Station’s opening.

Instead it is flat, empty land.

More than a successful shopping mall, Westwood Station was to have two hotels, retail space, office space, 1,000 living spaces and might require a police station, fire station, new school and more. This was envisioned as a separate town, one that would generate so much tax money that the people of Westwood would have no more increased taxes on their houses.

Passengers from the Amtrak trains would travel great distances just to experience Westwood Station. This would be far larger than a town’s mall; it would draw people from Washington, D.C., New York, N.Y. and beyond.

Auto traffic was just one tiny piece of the gargantuan scheme.

Though not the major artery to Westwood Station, Rte. 1 was crucial to keeping the thousand motorists flowing smoothly.

Since Westwood Station unveiled itself as the savior of local taxpayers, lots has changed. United States finances plunged into a recession that is, right now, tottering near another possible double dip horror. Cabot, Cabot & Forbes, Commonfund Realty Investors and New England Development, the owners, are still trying to put all the pieces together. If they do, chances are that the finished product will differ from the original 135-acre original plan. When they announced Westwood Station, they estimated its cost at $1.5 billion. Huge as that number is, it will change if the project is a decade late. It could go even higher.

For now, Westwood Station still stands as Westwood’s way around taxes. The town expects it to happen.

So the talk about using Rte. 1 breakdown lanes as a temporary measure until state or federal funds come along to build a permanent solution is – to say the least – an extremely complicated matter. It involves enormous building plans at Westwood Station, existing new building at Dedham’s Rte. 128 that must be factored into the equation; Rte. 128 widening which is still going on; I-95 traffic; and the plans for the permanent solution, which were drawn long ago and may or may not fit the new realities.

Remember, it is Norwood that is asking Westwood for the temporary breakdown method.

That seems backward.

Rte. 1 needs much more than just a breakdown lane. It needs context. Norwood General Manager Carroll needs to provide that.