Which ivory tower engineers revamped the intersection of Hayden Rowe and Main Street, incomprehensibly scooping out a huge semicircle from the corner, forcing cars to veer into the other lane? With now such dangerously tight quarters, get ready to hear the explosions of side walls being blown out. For what? A pointless peninsula jutting out from the Town Common? Maybe we should name it Blowout Corner. And a sign warning “Right turn left lane only.”
And one demented turn deserves another: a matching design up the road, the same irrational arcing out into the right turn lane from Route 85 to Main Street, encroaching on what had been a comfortable turning lane squeezed into a no-room-for-error maneuver, to create another mystery dead zone by the gas station.
Who are these unmoored masterminds? Oh ya, the same ones who narrowed Main Street to pencil-thin, stretching the sidewalks to 10 abreast and installing the infamous bike lane to nowhere.
The motto of this vaunted corridor project seems to be, “If it ain’t broke, break it! Then get paid to fix it back to its original working state.” Sounds like a pretty good racket to me. Or just plain incompetence.
And the most basic question: Who/what initiated this fiasco? Oh ya, the will of the people who heard the siren call of “free money.”
— Margaret Barton, Hopkinton
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Great read. The biggest problem lies with MassHighway and the designers. MassHighway and MADOT before only recognize two geometries: right-angles and circles. (They) insist on making every intersection a hard right angle, with no consideration for current traffic patterns and functionality.
P.S. The Wood Street / Main Street intersection is also very, very poorly designed, especially for turning right onto Wood Street. The bump-out in front of Next Generation should have been eliminated – not expanded as it has been. Moving the right turn lane over would make it easier for tractor trailers and other large trucks to turn from West Main Street onto Wood Street.
In the Massachusetts Driving Manual, it notes that in foggy conditions, “If you cannot see the pavement or sign posts, slow down and look for road edge markings to guide you.” Except don’t do this on Hayden Rowe at the Main Street intersection, because that will run you directly into the sharp granite curb. Decreased safety to add a couple feet of grass makes no sense.