Massachusetts Turnpike
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Massachusetts Turnpike is the easternmost 138-mile (222 km) stretch of Interstate 90. I-90 and the "Mass Pike" both begin at Logan International Airport in East Boston where they meet Route 1A. The Mass Pike then extends to the western border of the state at West Stockbridge where it ends. The roadway itself continues across the border into New York as I-90 and the Berkshire Connector portion of the New York State Thruway.
Contents |
[edit] Tolls
The Mass Pike is a toll road; it costs $4.60 for a Class 1 passenger vehicle to travel eastbound from Exit 1 (Route 41) in West Stockbridge to Logan Airport in Boston. From Exit 1 in West Stockbridge to Exit 14/15 (Route 128/I-95) in Weston, it is a closed system toll road, using a system of long-distance tickets, obtained once by a motorist upon entering and surrendered upon exiting at toll gates. The toll gates exist at all exits and entrances from Exit 1 up to Exit 14/15. From Exit 14/15 to its eastern terminus in East Boston, the Mass Pike is an open system toll road. There are toll plazas at Exit 18/19/20 in Allston, Massachusetts in both mainline directions and on the interchange ramps. There is also a toll plaza on the mainline at the westbound entrance to the Ted Williams Tunnel in East Boston. Exits 16 and 17 as well as 21 through 26 have no toll plazas on their ramps.
Toll plazas on the interchange ramps at Exit 16 were removed in 1996 at the direction of then Governor William Weld.
Following protests from Western Massachusetts residents that their toll money was funding the Big Dig, a Boston highway project, tolls were removed on a western portion of the freeway in July, 1996. As such, no toll is charged for passenger vehicle travel between Springfield (Exit 6, Interstate 291) and the New York (Exit 1, West Stockbridge) border in either direction. Motorists can opt to pay their tolls using a toll booth operator or utilize the Fast Lane electronic toll collection system, whereby motorists install transponders on their cars (typically on the interior of their windshields) and use special lanes at the toll plazas that recognize the transponders and automatically withdraw the toll amount from the motorists' accounts. Fast Lane is compatible with the E-ZPass electronic toll collection system which is used throughout the northeast corridor.
The return trip from Logan Airport costs $3 more, since the Ted Williams Tunnel has a toll only in the westbound direction.
[edit] History
Plans for the Turnpike date back to at least 1948, when the Western Expressway was being planned. The original section would have connected Boston's Inner Belt to Newton with connections with US 20 and Route 30 for traffic continuing west. Later extensions would take the road to and beyond Worcester. From the beginning, the corridor was included in federal plans for the Interstate Highway System, stretching west to the New York state line and beyond to Albany.
Also included in the route was the planned Springfield Bypass, which had been proposed to provide a bypass of US 20 in the Springfield area. Part of this route (and that of the eventual Turnpike) used the grading from the never-opened Hampden Railroad. Similarly, the West Stockbridge Bypass provided a new route of Route 102 from Route 183 in Stockbridge west to Route 102 just east of the state line in West Stockbridge; this latter route was built prior to the Turnpike.
The Boston-Springfield Highway Authority was created in 1952, and was soon renamed the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority. Construction began in 1955, and the whole four-lane road from Route 102 at the state line to Route 128 in Weston opened on May 15, 1957. The Berkshire Thruway opened on May 26, 1959, connecting the west end to the New York State Thruway mainline south of Albany. Prior to its opening, traffic used Route 22 and US 20 in New York.
After political and legal battles related to the Boston Extension inside Route 128, construction began on March 5, 1962, with the chosen alignment running next to the Boston and Albany Railroad and reducing that line to two tracks. In September 1964 the part from Route 128 east to exit 18 (Allston) opened, and the rest was finished on February 18, 1965, taking it to the Central Artery.
The Interstate 90 label was assigned to the Turnpike in 1959 with the completion of plans for the Interstate Highway System. Early proposals took I-90 across the northern part of the state, along Route 2, but this was rejected as too costly. With the completion of the Boston Extension, that too was designated as I-90.
In 1991, construction began on the extension of the Mass Pike to Logan Airport, via the Ted Williams Tunnel as part of the Big Dig "mega" project. The final extension opened in 2003; the eastern end of I-90 now merges into Route 1A.
[edit] Controversy
Since 2001, the Turnpike Authority had come under fire from state politicians in a fight for control of the quasi-state agency. Beginning in 2001, former Massachusetts acting governor Jane Swift attempted to fire Christy Mihos, a former Turnpike board member and Jordan Levy, the current Vice Chairman of the board.
Mihos and Levy had cast votes on the board to postpone a toll hike. Swift objected, saying such a delay was “fiscally irresponsible” and saying the two men "interfered with the effective daily management of the Authority.” [1] [2] Mihos and Levy refused to step down and sued Swift to retain their positions. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) ruled that the Turnpike was “not part of the machinery of the government” and therefore not subject to Swift’s decisions.
Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney, elected in 2002 during a fiscal crisis, ran on a platform of streamlining state government and eliminating waste. Part of this was the elimination of the Turnpike Authority. Romney wanted to fold the Turnpike into MassHighway, the state highway department, operated under the Executive Office of Transportation. A first step to this was to replace the Chairman of the Board, Matthew J. Amorello with someone loyal to the governor. The governor has the power to appoint members to the board, but the SJC advised in an Amicus brief that “nothing in G. L. c. 81A explicitly provides for the removal and reassignment of the chairperson to the position of "member.”” [3] [4]
The governor took the case to the court of the public opinion and put enormous pressure on Amorello to step down. Amorello announced he would do so in 2007, after Romney would have left office. Romney continued to press the legislature to give him the power to remove members from the board, specifically the chairman, pointing to a series of financial and construction mishaps over the last several years. However, the legislature instead sought to keep Amorello on board by extending the terms of various board members to prevent Romney from removing Amorello. [5]
In response to a fatality caused by a tunnel ceiling collapse on July 10, 2006, and in response to Amorello's refusal (at the time) to resign, Romney took legal steps to have Amorello forcibly removed as head of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, [6] culminating in Amorello's resignation on August 15, 2006.
On October 18, 2006, the Turnpike board voted to remove all tolls west of the 128 toll plaza in response to a [7] made by Eric Kriss, a former fiscal adviser to the govenor, whom Romney asked to review the Turnpike situation following the July 2006 tunnel ceiling collapse.
On October 19, 2006 members of the Massachusetts Legislature Transportation Committee were quoted in the Boston Globe as saying that the governor's actions may require state law to be amended for the toll removal to happen. In addition, questions have been raised in regard to how the State would fund the maintenance of the Turnpike after the removal of the tolls.
The issue of the removal of the tolls is highly charged politically. Several members of the state Democratic Party declared this as a political maneuver to bolster the gubernatorial campaign of Republican Lt. Governor Kerry Healy, who was behind in the polls at the time of the announcement. Also, because the MTA Board is composed of appointees of Governor Romney, Mr. Kriss's former association with the Romney Administration and the ongoing election, the issue is clouded by accusations of partiality and political agendas from both sides of the aisle.
In the November 9, 2006 edition of the Boston Globe, Gov. Romney announced his intention to try to remove the tolls before Governor-elect Deval Patrick was inaugurated in January 2007.
On November 27, 2006, departing Attorney General Tom Reilly announced the state will launch a civil suit over the collapse of the ceiling in the Ted Williams Tunnel. The Commonwealth will be seeking over $150 million dollars from project manager Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff, builder Modern Continental Construction Co. and the manufacturer of the epoxy used to hold the ceiling bolts.[8]
[edit] Exits
The Massachusetts Turnpike uses a system of sequential exit numbered interchanges. Since the time that the interchanges were originally numbered, more have been added, leading to situations like Exit 11, which is a minor state route, and 11A, which is a major Interstate Highway 10 miles away.
Also, near Boston, some of the interchanges are solely onramps and are not signed as exits, so, for instance, there is no "Exit 21" signed.
| Interchange | Location | Road(s) Crossed | Distance from NY state line (mi) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Turnpike begins at New York state line where it continues west as the New York State Thruway. | ||||
| 1 | West Stockbridge |  (MA 41) |
2.9 | Westbound exit/eastbound entrance only, with barrier toll to the east of the interchange. |
| 2 | Lee |   (US 20/MA 102) |
10.6 | To Lee and Pittsfield |
| 3 | Westfield |   (US 202/MA 10) |
40.4 | To Westfield and Northampton |
| 4 | West Springfield |   (I-91/US 5) |
45.7 | Hartford exit for Eastbound travelers; to Springfield and Holyoke |
| 5 | Chicopee |  (MA 33) |
49.0 | To  Westover AFRB/Airport |
| 6 | Springfield |  (I-291) |
51.3 | Stoplight intersection to I-291, exit actually in Chicopee. |
| 7 | Ludlow |  (MA 21) |
54.9 | To Ludlow and Belchertown |
| 8 | Palmer |  (MA 32) |
62.8 | To Palmer, Ware, and Amherst |
| 9 | Sturbridge |  (I-84) |
78.5 | Formerly I-86; to Sturbridge, Hartford, and New York City |
| 10 | Auburn |    (I-290/I-395/MA 12) |
90.2 | To Auburn, Worcester, and Eastern Connecticut. |
| 10A | Worcester |   (MA 146/US 20/MA 122A) |
94.1 | To Providence. The interchange was opened in 1998. MA 122A not marked on signs. |
| 11 | Millbury |  (MA 122) |
96.5 | To Grafton and Uxbridge |
| 11A | Westborough / Hopkinton |  (I-495) |
106.2 | To New Hampshire, Maine, and Cape Cod. Interchange opened in 1969. |
| 12 | Framingham |  (MA 9) |
111.4 | To Framingham and Marlborough |
| 13 | Natick |  (MA 30) |
116.8 | |
| 14/15 | Weston |   (MA 128/I-95/MA 30) |
123.3 | Barrier toll plaza and interchanges (14 for the eastbound exit and westbound entrance, 15 for the westbound exit, eastbound entrance and mainline. MA 30 access is westbound exit/eastbound enter only. |
| 16 | West Newton |  (MA 16) |
125.2 | Westbound exit/eastbound entrance; exit became toll-free in 1996; to West Newton and Wellesley |
| 17 | Newton | 127.7 | To Newton and Watertown | |
| All interchanges east of here are in Boston. | ||||
| 18-20 | Allston/Brighton | To Soldier's Field Road | 130.9 | Barrier toll plaza and interchanges (18 for the eastbound exit and westbound entrance, 19 for the mainline tolls, 20 for the westbound exit and eastbound entrance) |
| 21 | Back Bay | Massachusetts Avenue | 132.9 | Westbound entrance only, no exit. Number not marked |
| 22 | Copley/Prudential |  MA 9/Route 28 |
133.4 | Eastbound exit / westbound entrance |
| 23 | Theater District | Arlington Street | 133.9 | Westbound entrance only, no exit. Number not marked. |
| 24A-B-C | South Station |    (I-93/US 1/Route 3) |
134.6 | This was the eastern end of the Massachusetts Turnpike and I-90 until 2003. No access from I-93 south to I-90 east. Eastbound Turnpike is toll-free east of this interchange. |
| The Mass Pike is currently CLOSED between exits 24 and 25 due to the tunnel collapse. One eastbound lane in the connector tunnel was re-opened on 1 September 2006[9]. | ||||
| 25 | South Boston | Local streets. | 135.3 | Toll-free interchange. |
| 26 | Logan Airport/Ted Williams Tunnel |
137.3 | $3 toll westbound through the tunnel | |
| East Boston |  (merges with Route 1A) |
137.8 | End of I-90, and end of the Turnpike. | |
[edit] Toll ticket colors
Toll tickets obtained by motorists traveling on the Mass Pike are color-coded based on the interchange where the motorist entered the Pike. In addition to the black stripe on the back which is read by a magnetic reader, this color coding allows rapid identification by the toll collector, expediting the process of toll collection.
- Exit 1 is orange.
- Exits 2-8, 11 and 12 are gray.
- Exit 9 is purple.
- Exit 10 is light blue.
- Exit 10A is dark blue/purple.
- Exit 11A is brown.
- Exit 13 is yellow.
- Exit 14 is green.
- Exit 15 is pink.
[edit] Service areas
There are 11 service areas (plazas) on the Massachusetts Turnpike, named for the towns in which they are located. They are:
- Lee Plaza (Eastbound and Westbound) between exits 1 and 2.
- Blandford Plaza (Eastbound and Westbound) between exits 2 and 3.
- Ludlow Plaza (Eastbound and Westbound) between exits 7 and 8.
- Charlton Plaza (Eastbound and Westbound) between exits 9 and 10.
- Westborough Plaza (Westbound) between exits 11A and 11.
- Framingham Plaza (Westbound) between exits 13 and 12.
- Natick Plaza (Eastbound) between exits 13 and 14.
A weigh station is located on the eastbound side of the turnpike in Charlton between exits 9 and 10.
[edit] The Mass Pike in song and popular culture
- James Taylor's 1969 song Sweet Baby James contains this mention:
-
- "Now the first of December was covered with snow
- And so was the Turnpike from Stockbridge to Boston
- Though the Berkshires seemed dreamlike on account of that frosting
- With ten miles behind me, and ten thousand more to go."
- No matter where the song is played, some people in the audience always cheer in recognition when these lines are sung.
- Kansas City's group The Get Up Kids featured a song titled Mass Pike on their 1999 EP Red Letter Day.
[edit] References
- ^ [1]
- ^ [2]
- ^ [3]
- ^ [4]
- ^ Amorello's cynical games
- ^ Romney Acts To Remove Amorello, Citing Public Safety
- ^ recommendation
- ^ Mass. to sue Big Dig firms over tunnel accident, Reuters, 2006-11-27
- ^ Section of I-90 Connector will reopen on Friday, September 1, 2006 at approximately 9:00 PM
- Boston to Chicago, New York Times May 24, 1959 page XX1
[edit] External links
- Massachusetts Turnpike Authority Website
- The Roads of Metro Boston - Massachusetts Turnpike (I-90)
- Big Dig Ceiling Collapse -- The Boston Globe
- Big Dig Problems -- The Boston Globe
- Finishing the Big Dig -- The Boston Globe
- Amorello, options were left exhausted -- The Boston Globe
- A vacancy at the helm -- The Boston Globe
- Top staff is leaving Mass. Pike -- The Boston Globe
- I-90 connector reopens to traffic -- The Boston Globe
- Designer proposed more bolts in Big Dig -- The Boston Globe
- Tunnel bolts never inspected -- The Boston Globe
- Pike board acts to end tolls west of Route 128 -- The Boston Globe
- Ending Pike tolls is called illegal -- The Boston Globe
- Late Design Change Is Cited in Collapse of Tunnel Ceiling in Boston -- The New York Times
- AG, alleging negligence, will sue in tunnel cave-in -- The Boston Globe
- Reilly says neglect with tunnel was criminal -- The Boston Globe
- Commonwealth of Mass. v. Bechtel Corporation, et al.
