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By Douglas McCulloch
Hometown Weekly Staff
A fix for the troubled East Street railroad bridge in Westwood is currently underway.
At the April 11 Board of Selectmen meeting, MBTA Director of Transit Oriented Projects Peter Paravalos presented an update on the ongoing proposal to raise the vertical clearance of the East Street Bridge.
The East Street Bridge faces two major problems that make it accident prone, according to the presentation. The road narrows at the bridge, and numerous head-on collisions have been caused by vehicles striking the granite curbing where the road narrows and crashing into oncoming traffic.
The bridge also offers only 10’ 6” of vertical clearance, and frequent crashes occur from overheight trucks that strike the bridge.
Over the past few years, crashes at the bridge have become such a common occurrence that the Westwood Police Department installed a camera facing the bridge to record accidents that occur at the bridge. To date, 81 accidents have been reported from 2009-2015.
The town has spent $40,000 to install improved signage warning of the low clearance of the bridge in recent years, with several signs visible in both directions from Washington Street to the west, and the East Street rotary to the east. Despite the signage, crashes still occur.
The MBTA project to improve the bridge and reduce the chance of accidents calls for multiple changes designed to increase the vertical clearance of the bridge and widen the roadway.
The existing bridge would be demolished and a new bridge would be built, the roadway would be lowered, existing utilities that pass under the road would be relocated, and railroad tracks between Islington Station to the north and the Everett Street undergrade bridge to the south would be raised, allowing for the extra height for the bridge. The road would also be widened.
With all of the changes, the project hopes to increase the vertical clearance of the East Street bridge to 13’ 6”, an addition of three feet of vertical clearance.
Westwood Town Administrator Mike Jaillet noted that the design incorporates several concerns he heard from residents of the Islington neighborhood. The existing truck restrictions on East Street will remain in place after the new bridge is built, after residents expressed concerns that increasing the height of the bridge would increase the number of trucks passing through Islington.
The construction will also not negatively impact Islington Station, meaning Islington residents will still have easy access to the train station.
In 2012, after an MBTA bus struck the bridge and triggered an evacuation of nearby homes and businesses after the bus’s propane tank ruptured, Jaillet began discussions with the MBTA to help make the bridge safer. Now that concrete design plans have been created, Jaillet was happy with the speed that the project is progressing.
“We are very pleased with the speed at which the MBTA have responded,” Jaillet said.
The proposal is a work in progress, and continues to be updated. The project is currently in the design phase, with construction scheduled to start in June 2017 and bridge installation to occur in the spring or summer of 2018. The project is being funded entirely by the MBTA.
