Westwood Officials: Breakdown Lane Travel on Rte. 1 Not Likely

After receiving to allow for travel in the breakdown lane on Providence Highway, Westwood officials said Monday night that the idea actually moving through would be unlikely.

Norwood had proposed that traffic be allowed to travel in the breakdown lanes during high-traffic time periods throughout the day on Providence Highway, which is also Rte. 1.

"The primary reason would be to more efficiently and effectively move traffic through," Jaillet explained to the Westwood Board of Selectmen in an update on the proposal Monday night. "If you have an extra lane, it could move through."

Upon meeting with Norwood General Manager John Carol and Town Engineer Mark Ryan, Jaillet expressed a number of areas of concern, most of them safety-related.

"Rte. 1 is not like the highway, where you don't have businesses and curb cuts," Jaillet said Monday night. "There are no pedestrians or cyclists on the highway. It really is in a position where if there's an accident, the breakdown would become clogged, and our emergency vehicles would not be able to respond."

While the Board of Selectmen had expressed interest in looking at ways to alleviate traffic problems along the road, they were in agreement that using the breakdown lane for travel was not the best way to go about it.

"To think that you're going to have dozens of entry and exit points and people on bicycles, I can't even imagine it," said Selectmen Third Member Phil Shapiro. "When you look at how fast people get in that stretch, it's three-quarters of a mile between lights."

Jaillet said Norwood officials listened to the concerns attentively and that they indidcated the move to expand the roadway would most likely not come to pass.

"I would anticipate that they would not go forward," Jaillet said.