By William Tauro
Was the recent closing of the McGrath Highway offramp that leads down to Target and Burger King in the best interest of the residents and business owners of Somerville or was it a big mistake?
Is the city deliberately trying to drive property and business owners to disgust and failure via sabotaging roadways to stall more developments and certain Somerville retailing businesses?
By looking at all the most recent actions over the past few years its very hard to tell what side this adminerstration is on.
Just look back three years ago at the elimination of over one hundred parking spots on McGrath Highway/Medford Street in Somerville converting it only one side parking.
Then again just only two years ago the city tried eliminating the remaining all of the parking spaces on that same road but lost the battle.
Luckily for these residents and business owners this time around the neighborhood and this very paper fought back against the city’s parking elimination plans and were victorious over keeping the parking spaces.
If that had gone through it would’ve deprived hundreds of residents and dozens of business owners the right to park in front of their own homes and businesses. Their customers would’ve given up due to the lack of parking and going elsewhere to do there businesses.
Now new theories are surfacing regarding the reasoning behind why the McGrath Highway overpass exit offramp that leads down to Burger King, Target, Hub Glass, Carroll Roofing, John’s Auto Sales and many more properties along Somerville Avenue have been closed down for over a year or two now?
What was the reasoning for it? If you ask the mayors office they tell you that the overpass is coming down. But then again when is the overpass coming down in 10 years, 20 years, 25 years?
So what was the reasoning/motive that the overpass has been closed down now this early in any phase of demolition?
The state and city just recently spent almost over $21 million to refurbish that overpass a couple of years ago and now they close it off, you can’t make this stuff up!
Are the city hall engineers trying to starve them by depriving them of motorist the use of that vital offramp to conduct business in that area.
An offramp that is crucial for the survival of many businesses in that area. Could it be part of a bigger plot to prolong another stalled development that was underway in that area as well?
Here we are two years later with hundreds of businesses on that street as well as in Ward 2 who are starving for customers due to lack of parking spaces and now motor vehicle traffic.
In other words is city hall out to cut off their circulation by closing the offramp? Is it intentional? Is city hall setting these businesses up for failure? Is it a plot to get them to leave their property via financial stress and have a developer come in and redevelop the area?
We are hoping that the new Board of Alderman can recognize that there is a serious problem here. We are hoping that they will take the necessary steps to re-open that offramp before more business failure begins to emerge.
We have noticed that in this past week or two that new lighting on the closed offramp and sealed off tunnel have been installed. Are they planning to re-open it now hopefully yes?
The former Ward 2 Alderman for that area nor the mayor as well as for the Somerville Chamber of Commerce didn’t look out for the ward’s many business owner’s best interest and wellbeing.
Isn’t that why we have Aldermen and a Chamber of Commerce to help local businesses thrive or should the property and business owners all have to lawyer-up to get this offramp re-opened and have somebody outside the city represent them before failure is upon them?
Mr. Mayor and the honorable board of Aldermen, please do the job that you were elected to do. This offramp being closed is hurting people, hurting businesses and hurting Somerville!
Please voice you’re opinion and sign the petition to re-open the McGrath Highway Overpass! To sign the petition please email:Somervillenewsweekly@yahoo.com
I forgot. That mess at the end of Temple street where trucks and tractor trailers now have to go over the sidewalk as the engineers could not figure out how much room a truck needs to go around the corner. Just another to add to the stupid list.
WORST DECISION EVER . The new lights that have taken the place of the bridge ? ridiculous..now if you really want to talk about awful.,… the lights on the back street near assembly row…. 2 sets of lights that are so close together about 100ft they are never in sync and when the far set turns green , everyone races through the first red light…. Now if you really want me to dig in, put some more goddamn lights at assembly row… People just walk across the st and never walk in the crosswalks. It is so dangerous so dangerous come on somerville step it up .. You fixed the Mcgrath highway bridge (looks like shit) you rerouted traffic… nice work and … Oh and one more thing, the lights at the other side of Mcgrath highway by the JM fields condos, Oh yes in the morning and rush hour , you have exacty 3 seconds to go thru the green before it changes…causes accidents and the police cant wait to pull you over when you run the yellow at 2.98 seconds. Come on somerville get with it……
You are right on Arnold. We pay people a lot of money to decide on how these tings should work and operate. So called high priced specialists who succeed in making a simple problem worse. Don’t expect it to get better, it will just continue to go downhill from here. There is a huge loss of common sense in the way things have been done here in Somerville.and will continue to decline.
Ever since the offramp and tunnel closed, traffic flow through here has been a breeze. The closure made the intersections much easier to navigate and it feels so much more comfortable walking to and waiting for the bus. It was a walker’s nightmare before. I’m glad they made the decision to stop catering to cut through highway traffic and focus more on the needs of the immediate neighborhood!
Of cource its a breeze now half the traffic is gone soon it will be empty store fronts
Yes it’s easy to walk to your bus stop where you bus out of town but people coming into town to do business and spend money via offramp doesn’t work out for them
They can use the other offramp… You just have to get used to using the one for Washington St instead. This is really a non-issue for most people given the benefits of the change.
Closing that ramp was a huge benefit to the neighborhood. There’s “no access to the overpass” now? There is a ramp 800 feet away. Closing that ramp allowed the better connection from Somerville Ave to 28 north, far more valuable than two ramps to the same place.