“Carpocolypse” (aka “Carmaggedon”) refers to foreseeable traffic gridlock due to an impending road construction project, as famously applied in Los Angeles to the closure of the I-405 freeway for three days in 2014.
Northampton faces such a debacle of its own, as I learned from the Gazette’s front-page article by Scott Merzbach on July 26 titled: “Northampton I-91 bridge work to begin” (Thank you, Gazette!) The article reports that the Massachusetts Department of Transportation will begin this summer to replace two sets of overpasses: one at the key intersection with Route 5 near Atwood Drive (including some bikeway improvements) and the other crossing Hockanum Road, a seasonal unpaved road leading to the cornfields in the Northampton Meadows.
The project will cost an estimated $56 million and will require four years to complete! Granted, MassDOT has elaborate plans to keep I-91 traffic flowing through construction of “temporary travel lanes and a temporary bridge . . . in the highway median.” But it admits that the contractor will need “to block off a lane of traffic periodically, leading to traffic slowdowns.” Is that reassuring?
On a recent weekday morning, my wife and I spent 45 minutes creeping along two miles on the Mass. Pike, apparently due to installation of new guard rails on the westbound side approaching the Lee exit. On our return trip a few hours later, the westbound traffic was still backed up for seven miles as measured on our odometer. A week later we observed another six-mile backup between Palmer and Worcester due to an accident. On Aug. 1 we detoured to Route 20 twice due to back-ups on the Pike.
Such delays on a toll road are aggravated by scarcity of escape opportunities in many locations. Stomachs and gas tanks need be refilled and bladders emptied, but there is no way to get off the damn highway in the middle of nowhere. And despite all its fancy new digital signage, the state authorities seem averse to alerting drivers not to enter the Turnpike when long delays await them.
Non-toll interstate highways like I-91 have more numerous exits (now pointlessly renumbered at our tax expense). As lanes are closed or accidents occur, I-91 traffic will detour to Route 5 either at the driver’s choice or police direction. The Northampton project will thus add unpredictable surges of car and truck traffic to the perennial congestion of King and Pleasant streets — endangering local cyclists and pedestrians, hampering deliveries, obstructing emergency vehicles, and tying up downtown Northampton.
Exhausts from idling cars and trucks, including many diesel-powered 18-wheelers, will degrade local air quality and contribute to rising greenhouse gas emissions. Have the state or the city done anything to prepare for this chaos? I was informed that this is a state project and therefore the city is not involved.
The Hockanum Road element of the project, which extends the construction zone by nearly a half mile toward the Coolidge Bridge exit, raises serious environmental and planning concerns of its own. Beyond the interstate viaduct, Hockanum Road presently is a dusty dirt road that leads only to the Meadows — an extraordinary expanse of farmland with few structures (thanks to floodplain zoning applied to the entire area when I was a Planning Board member in the late 1970s).
Given today’s anti-regulatory climate, an “improved” Hockanum Road could be a gateway to future zoning changes allowing elevated development in this historic pastoral landscape, little changed since it was painted by Thomas Cole in the 1840s (and now cherished by Florence photographer Steve Petegorsky)
The state Environmental Protection Act “requires that state agencies study the environmental consequences of their actions, including permitting and financial assistance. It also requires them to take all feasible measures to avoid, minimize, and mitigate damage to the environment …” including consideration of alternatives to the proposed action. The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requires similar scrutiny for proposed major federal actions such as funding for federal-aid highways.
Has MassDOT performed an environmental impact study of its Hockanum Road upgrade that considers less drastic and costly alternatives, like reinforcing the present overpass and closing it to vehicles other than farm equipment?
I knew nothing about the I-91 overpass project before I read the Gazette’s July 26 article. Local public officials and others I contacted also were largely unaware or unconcerned about the project. I dug up an old MassDOT notice of a public hearing on the project to be held on April 24, 2019 at the Northampton City Hall, but I found no press coverage before or after that hearing. The MassDOT notice provided no link to the project plans online and stated that “Plans will be on display one-half hour before the hearing begins,” thus discouraging any meaningful public review.
At this writing I have been unable to obtain a copy of MassDOT’s post-hearing report to learn who was in attendance and what was discussed, especially concerning Hockanum Road. I also am trying to review the project plans which are held tightly by MassDOT, requiring a special request to view them online. Overall, this has been a top-down planning process that recalls the bad old days of urban renewal and highway planning during the 1950s and 60s.
The city has apparently left the project to the divine wisdom of state highway planners who have proceeded with little or no local public input. Carpocalypse looms!
Rutherford H. Platt is an Emeritus Professor of Geography at UMass Amherst and the author of Land Use and Society: Geography, Law, and Public Policy (3rd. ed., 2014).