Howard/Stein-Hudson Associates, Inc.
CREATIVE SOLUTIONS • EFFECTIVE PARTNERING ®
MEMORANDUM
March 21, 2013
To:
Mike Bloukos
Project Manager – Route 9/I-290
MassDOT Highway Division
Through:
Richard Lennox
Project Manager
WSP Sells
From:
Nathaniel Curtis
Howard/Stein-Hudson
Public Involvement Specialist
RE:
Local Officials’ Briefing
Route 9 over I-290 Bridge Rehabilitation
MassDOT project no. 604065
HSH project no. 2012127
Overview
On March 12, 2013, members of the MassDOT design team for the Belmont Street Rehabilitation project
appeared at a meeting arranged by Worcester City Councilor Philip Palmieri. The meeting was held at the
UMass Memorial Medical Center campus on Belmont Street, just east of the Belmont Street Bridge over I290 and targeted state and local officials as well as hospital staff. The members of the project team are
grateful to the Councilor for arranging the meeting and helping to bring attendees to it. Reaction to the
enhancements to the 25% design shared at the meeting was broadly positive. The project team will take the
comments obtained at the meeting summarized herein and integrate them into the ongoing design process.
Meeting Minutes
C: Dana Swenson (DS): Good morning. I am the senior vice president of facilities for UMass Memorial. I’d
like to welcome local elected officials to our site, especially Joe Borbone from the City of Worcester and
Councilor Palmieri who arranged this meeting. This is a great opportunity for people to ask questions
and get the true story about this project. With that, here’s Mickey Splaine from MassDOT District 3.
C: Mickey Splaine (MS): Thank you Dana and Gio for helping to set this up and to Councilor Palmieri for
getting everyone together. Like we’ve said all along, like when we met with Marc Champa and Gio at
67 Belmont Street last week, public involvement is key to the success of this job. We can build this
bridge; that’s not the issue, it’s much more about communicating and trying to keep the travel patterns
as normal as we can. I’d like to take a moment and introduce the team that’s here today and then we’ll
make a brief presentation highlighting the changes we’ve made since the 25% design public hearing.
So, with me today from DOT is Tom Emerick our District Utilities Coordinator, Joe Frawley for traffic,
John Wicks and Rich Lennox from our engineering consultant WSP Sells.
C: Nathaniel Cabral-Curtis (NCC): Good morning everyone. I’m Nate Curtis, I’m with Howard/SteinHudson, we are a member of the project team, it’s nice to be here in Worcester and my wife’s family is
from Sutton so it’s nice to be in Central Massachusetts. I just want to briefly walk you through public
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outreach to date before I turn it over to the technical team. These are the things we have done to date
and will continue to do. We held public informational meetings in October and November of 2012 and
the 25% design public hearing in January, 2013. In terms of outreach methods we had an email and
telephone tree based on a stakeholder database of 120 people. We recognize this is a project with
broad regional implications so just to give you a sense of who’s on that list we have state and local
officials, we have Andy Davis from the Worcester Regional Airport, we have the managers of your
downtown hotels, and even Mechanics Hall, fire and police chiefs from communities down Route 146
and out towards the Brookfields so it’s quite a list. We had coordination with state officials via
MassDOT’s legislative liaison. For our meetings we reached out to local newspapers in English
(Worcester Telegram & Gazette), Spanish (Vocero Hispano) and Vietnamese, (The Bell) and we also
worked with the Central Massachusetts Regional Planning Council (CMRPC) whose website hosts
documents for this particular job. Subsequent to the 25% design meeting, MassDOT has been holding
individual abutter meetings for those who requested them. We have completed the one at 67 Belmont
Street. We were to meet with the Chinese Gospel Church last Friday; we were on until about noontime
when the pastor cancelled all evening activities which included us. That meeting has been kicked to this
coming Friday so that will be taken care of forthwith. We are currently planning another large-scale,
evening public information meeting following our session here today and the meeting with the Chinese
Gospel Church and with that I will give it to the technical team.
A: MS: And I’m sorry, this is Nate Cabral-Curtis and we couldn’t do this without his help.
C: NCC: Oh, thank you Mickey, much appreciated.
C: Rich Lennox (RL): I’m going to take a few minutes to describe why we are here and how we’ll accomplish
this work. The Belmont Street Bridge over I-290 needs to be replaced. It’s at the end of its useful
lifespan. We plan to replace the entire superstructure and much of the substructure including the center
pier. During construction we are going to overbuild the bridge towards the south. That’s to provide
adequate space to keep traffic moving during construction. We are also looking into accelerated
construction methods and trying to do everything we can to condense the timeframe. Those are
techniques like using precast concrete as opposed to forming and casting in place. We’re also going to
build the new center pier off to one side so that can be built without impacts to Belmont Street.
The key question with this project is maintaining traffic during construction and based on all those
meetings Nate mentioned we’ve received comments and adjusted our scheme. In this diagram you can
see the purple shaded area. That’s where we are proposing to install a temporary pedestrian bridge
north of the main structure. That was suggested to us at the 25% design hearing and it will provide a
walk way through the job that keeps pedestrians completely out of the work zone. That would be
maintained through the duration of the job. The project is going to be built in two phases. In the first
phase we build on the south side with traffic maintained on the north side of the existing bridge. With
the temporary pedestrian bridge we can take the current sidewalk and get three lanes of traffic,
previously we had been proposing two, to give us two eastbound lanes and one westbound lane. We
can do this by repurposing the 5 or 6 feet of the current sidewalk. This change lets us maintain all of the
movements you can make today from the I-290 off ramp though we’ll have to condense the double leftturn lane down into a single left-turn/through lane. The contractor is going to have a tight work area
as it is so we really need to provide the space for them. At the on-ramp, we will need to restrict
westbound left turns. This will inconvenience anyone coming down Belmont Street westbound in that
they will need to use Lincoln Square or Shrewsbury Street, that’s the proposed scheme. So to recap, all
of the off-ramp movements stay the same, but the westbound left turn to I-290 is lost for the duration of
construction.
So, that’s phase one. In phase two we shift traffic to the south and finish the bridge to the north. During
that phase, all pedestrian traffic would remain on the temporary pedestrian bridge. The detour routes
would primarily be for westbound traffic. We’ve talked about having message boards on Belmont Street
and I-290 advising of the construction ahead and suggesting alternate routes. We expect that during
the first week or two of construction, there will be a learning curve for motorists. As I said earlier we will
overbuild the bridge which means at the end of construction we can provide a fifth lane which will be for
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westbound left turns to I-290. That will provide a traffic operation improvement in the finished condition
because it will provide queue storage for that movement.
The new bridge will be a two-span steel bridge with a new center pier. There will still be a concrete
parapet, but the big visual difference will be the railing which will be solid concrete instead of the steel
you have today. Our current schedule is to complete the design prior to October of this year and get a
contractor in place so we can begin construction early in 2014. I say two construction seasons, but we’re
working hard to condense the impact on Belmont Street. During the start of the work we’ll be working
on I-290 so we’re working towards getting 12-14 months of impact on Belmont Street itself. We’re also
coordinating with the utilities on the project. Verizon has lines under the sidewalk so we’re working on a
scheme to protect those lines so we can run traffic over that area. You might have seen us earlier this
week drilling a test put to locate those lines and make sure we don't impact Verizon’s facilities. And
that’s pretty much it. Thank you.
C: MS: Thank you Rich, I’m going to run this like any public information meeting in that I’m going to ask
that we let elected leaders go first; yes, Senator Chandler.
C: Hariette Chandler (HC): My only concern is how much dislocation there will be for people driving either
way on Belmont Street.
A: MS: What you see today represents our best attempt to keep things normal. What we heard during our
67 Belmont Street meeting, and the same applies to UMass Memorial, is that the concern is for patients
to get here without changes to their travel pattern. There might be changes when they depart, but
hopefully by then the urgency of their visit has passed, so what we’ve tried to do is sustain arrival
patterns. We can’t hold onto all three lanes on the I-290 off-ramp because of construction and need to
avoid merging two lanes down into one. We’ve identified two lanes going east, or uphill to
accommodate the left turns in and out of the hospital, because if there was one lane, the left turns
coming in and out of here already cause problems, so if it was one lane uphill and two lanes down, we
just don’t think it would be as effective, but we’re open to feedback.
Q: James O’Day (JOD): That looks very neat, but at 3:15PM when traffic starts to back up, human nature
being what it is, I see people taking rights on Oak Avenue or Hooper Street. People in those
neighborhoods need to be aware of the potential for folks not wanting to wait in the backup and while
this isn’t unique, this is a highly trafficked area. Neighborhoods are generally impacted and people get
in a hurry and don’t want to sit in traffic so the project gets started and suddenly your neighborhood is
all different.
A: MS: That’s a good question. If we could pick a location to do a bridge project, it wouldn’t be here. We’ll
need to aggressively notify the public that this is going on. As many people as we can divert away from
Belmont Street before they get to the work site the better. Joe, would you speak to the bigger picture
effort on traffic?
A: Joe Frawley (JF): One of the things we’ve done on prior projects like the I-290 viaduct job, which
everyone was concerned about but which did go pretty well, is that we went out into the field with
Worcester DPW and we retimed signals along the route. The timing of the off-ramp signal will need to
be worked on and we’ll also work on signal timings on Shrewsbury Street and in Lincoln Square heading
down towards exit 16. We’re working on collecting new counts now and we should have those in a few
weeks. The counts used to inform the 25% design were from 2007. Certainly this is a tough area, but
we’ll do all we can to keep traffic moving.
A: MS: We’ll revise our models to make use of the current data, but like Joe said, the viaduct job did go
well. We can still make changes on the fly during construction. We won’t be locked into any one
scenario.
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Q: Councilor Philip Palmieri (PP): I have several questions. When there’s the reversal from phase one to
two, will the same patterns exist at the exit?
A: MS: Yes. You’ll still be able to make a left, a through, or a right.
Q: PP: That’s a critical element from last time and I applaud DOT for making these adjustments. The other
if your temporary pedestrian bridge, will it be built so it will accommodate the disabled? We have the
Worcester Housing Authority site here, youngsters trying to get to school and so forth. It can’t be just a
temporary ramp that won’t be accommodating.
A: MS: Good point and especially in this environment here with the hospital and WHA everything we do,
either temporary or permanent must be ADA-compliant so it will be accessible to all.
C: PP: Another ongoing question and critical issue: there have been several deaths at the crosswalk
between the hospital and the strip mall and it goes back several years to when Representatives O’Day
and Pedone and Senator Chandler were here at a meeting with us. I would hope you will address that
because just by having the crosswalk there without a yellow light or something is dangerous. The
realignment of the lights might be helpful, but that’s a critical element for our community.
A: MS: And we agree. We looked at that crosswalk yesterday and that is a dangerous situation. We keep
talking about it.
A: JF: What we propose is with CMRPC to conduct and RSA in advance, in the design process where we can
gather community members, police and fire departments and the City of Worcester to look at this
corridor in terms of safety. We’ve talked about flashing yellow lights, an LED beacon; we know we have
to incorporate something on that as part of this project.
Q: PP: Since it is a critical issue, is there any thought to do something like at Belmont Community School
with a footbridge? I don’t know if that could be constructed or enough pedestrians would use it; and I
do know you don’t have much room out there.
A: MS: We discussed that option yesterday and a footbridge here would have some right-of-way impacts.
My personal understanding with the bridge up the street is that the kids cross at-grade anyway. If there
was support on UMass Memorial for a bridge it would certainly be helpful to us. There is lots of foot
traffic here and if people would definitely use it, it would be safer, but the human tendency is for the
direct path so I think that we should begin at least with at-grade improvements.
C: PP: We need to be able to, and you said you would do an intense notification of the community, but
even prior to that, we’ve asked for a reverse call to the Belmont Street community; that would be an
essential element in bringing the community into this so that’s why I raise the issue. We have many
major institutions here today that I could reach out to and that’s a piece of the puzzle. We have the Bell
Hill Wall that needs to be done and that’s a component that will impact Worcester Technical High School
and another bridge at Atchison Street and those are all critical projects and DOT will need to reach out
and have traffic details to keep things moving. We hope DOT won’t leave us.
A: MS: Typically we have a significant detail budget and I have no doubt that it will be the same on this
project. We had this discussion yesterday with the traffic detail officer who accompanied our test pit drill
rig. We see this as a whole corridor from the Burns Bridge to I-290 with everything in between.
C: PP: We’re thrilled with the money and the projects, but just not knowing where traffic will go we may
have a need for additional traffic officers to keep the traffic moving.
A: MS: and we have working with CMRPC, we know we have an environmental justice area. As far as our
public meetings, we had identified, he had people on hand to address language issues. We had
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Worcester Regional Transit Authority shuttle buses available from Plumley Village. Nate, do you want to
talk a little more about that?
A: NCC: I would just note that we have worked closely with CMRPC. They did give us their information
about the neighborhood and the environmental justice aspect of it. When we did our public information,
we advertised in English, Spanish and Vietnamese per their instructions and we did have available on
hand at the public information meetings, we did have translation services there and it was noted on the
advertisements that those services would be on hand if required.
C: PP: You could also have fliers made up and distributed for the schools and daycare centers in the area.
C: HC: I represent this area and I’d be happy to supply you with names and addresses of everyone in this
district if you want them. I’d recommend continuing to do everything in English, Spanish and
Vietnamese. Two other things: I hope you are working with the police department because they can
make things smoother and I hope you will do an educational outreach to divert people away from
Belmont Street to Shrewsbury Street or Lincoln Square.
A: MS: We agree that outreach is a critical component of this. This job is really more challenging as a site
management effort than a bridge job.
Q: Councilor Kate Toomey (KT): Is it possible working with Joe Borbone and the DPW to have on-line maps
of possible detours provided to us for the City website?
A: MS: That’s a great idea. Let’s talk more afterwards. Joe would attend our RSA so we are making those
connections. One thing we need to complete our RSA is accident reports and sometimes getting those
can be challenging because of staffing issues, but getting those reports show us the reasons why there
are accidents so that’s very important to us. Any help you and Joe could throw behind that effort would
be greatly appreciated.
Q: Representative Mary Keefe (MK): Will there be any improvements in terms of lighting and the pedestrian
crosswalk?
A: JF: All signal equipment will be replaced in the work zone. That equipment will have full detection and
emergency vehicle preemption. There will be pedestrian accommodations at the signals including
audible pedestrian signals and count-downs on the signal heads. We’ll also get a safety improvement
by having the westbound left-turn lane so that the westbound through flow can be uninterrupted. As
part of the work our consultants are doing, they are using the new counts to help determine new timing
and phasing.
A: MS: Any time we do a job like this, we take the opportunity to upgrade the signals.
A: Tom Emerick (TE): And the new configuration will put the crosswalk back where it is today. We’ve also
heard through the meetings we’ve had that sometimes traffic on the ramp backs up onto the highway
and so we’ll put detection at the end of the ramp so it will alert the signal to the back-up, switch the
ramp to green, and clear the traffic out. That would start in temporary construction conditions and
probably remain in the permanent configuration.
Q: MK: So if there is traffic, would you have signage directing people down towards Catherine Street?
A: MS: Typically we don’t direct traffic off numbered routes and into neighborhoods. I don’t think Joe
Borbone would appreciate that to say nothing of the residents. Dana and I were talking earlier today
about this and while we anticipate that locals who know the back-roads will use them, we want to keep
regional traffic on major roads and out of neighborhoods.
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Q: JOD: Heading east there are several retail stores on Belmont Street. Will they keep their meters or will
those be removed?
A: MS: Those parking spaces will be eliminated during construction. Some of the bottleneck is due to onstreet parking there. By removing it, we can carry two lanes up the hill past Oak Street and keep the
merger further away from the intersection.
C: JOD: One thing to reiterate, communication here is absolutely important. Communication thus far has
been good between Councilor Palmieri, DOT and the state delegation. Keeping that up will make the
project go smoother.
A: MS: And we agree. We want those lines of communication open during the rest of design and into
construction.
Q: Name not Given (NNG): Have you considered allowing students and staff of the Worcester Technical
High School to cut through the park on Skyline Drive during peak times?
A: MS: It’s not something we’ve looked at yet, but we could talk to the City about it and see if it’s an option.
Would anyone else like to speak? No, O.K. I want to thank Councilor Palmieri for getting us together.
Public involvement is critical to the success of this project. Dana and Gio, thank you for the facility. To
all of our local officials, thank you for coming. Our design team is willing to stick around and discuss
this further. We have cards and if anything comes up and if you think of it later, please send it to us. I’ll
end the meeting there, but we’ll talk further.
Q: NNG: Is there a website for this project?
A: Mike Bloukos (MB): Good morning, I’m Mike Bloukos, I am MassDOT’s project manager for this job.
There is not a website for this particular job, but the CMRPC has volunteered to host the documents
generated to support the public involvement process on their site.
Q: NNG: This is a great forum. Could we have something like this say 25% of the way into construction? If
there’s a major impact we would like to have something similar, if there’s lots of confusion getting in.
A: MS: We’ll know well before ¼ of the way into the job if things are working right.
Q: NNG: But how would we get the forum together?
A: MB: Before construction starts there will be a pre-construction meeting at which the winning bidder will
need to lay out how the job is going to work. You would have an opportunity to ask questions and voice
concerns there. The contractor will begin work gradually with some preparatory phases so we’ll ease
into the work. During all phases there will be resident engineer to monitor how things are going. You
can always contact the resident engineer. Another good recourse is the district people. They are right
here in town and you can always give them your comments.
Q: HC: Could we have something set up for a distinct time? Members of the general public won’t call the
resident engineer.
A: MS: I like the suggestion. I’m all for trying something new. At the district level, we’ll set something up
with our construction people once we get the job underway.
Q: NNG: I’m going to open something else up: my question has to do with pedestrian pathways. You have
a pedestrian walkway towards the north. If someone is walking along the south side of Belmont Street,
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how would they safely travel the road? I’m concerned about people trying to cross the 290 ramps. I’m
worried about the crossing and signage.
A: MS: In a construction project, pedestrian safety is often a challenge. At the 25% design hearing we got
the suggestion for the pedestrian bridge. There’s good access and approaches to that bridge. On the
south side you would have to cross to the north, use the pedestrian bridge, and then re-cross to the
south. There just isn’t room for a pedestrian bridge on either side. We would have signals to protect the
crossing so it will be a very controlled movement. Once this pattern is put in place, it would stay
throughout the project so people will get used to it and how to use it.
A: JF: The crossing on the east side of the bridge will be part of the existing signal. The crossing on the
west side is something we’re looking at: we’re evaluating whether we’ll use the existing equipment or
put in some sort of temporary signal. We know there’s a need for audible signals for the visually
impaired. We’ll make sure both signals are fitted with accessible actuator buttons.
A: MB: There will be a continuous police detail in place during construction. In addition to all the standard
traffic control, there will be a live officer there who can stop traffic to help pedestrians cross the street
Next Steps
The next milestone in the public involvement process will be a third public information meeting to be held in
late April 2013. The purpose of this meeting will be to give the community another opportunity to become
informed about the project as it approaches final design. Particular focus will be given to those elements
which have been advanced since the 25% design public hearing through input from the community.
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Appendix 1: Meeting Attendees
First Name
Last Name
Affiliation
Marcus
Ammal
UMass Memorial
Michael
Bloukos
MassDOT
Stephanie
Boundy
MassDOT
Nathaniel
Cabral-Curtis
Howard/Stein-Hudson
Ted
Carlson
UMass Memorial
April
Caruso
67 Belmont Street
Marc
Champa
67 Belmont
Hariette
Chandler
State Senator
Lisa
Columbo
UMass Memorial
Maria
Cotto
Plumley Village
Lucelia
DeJesus
Plumley Village
Gio
DelloStritto
UMass Memorial
Moses
Dixon
Office of Representative Keefe
Thomas
Emerick
MassDOT
Barbara
Fisher
UMass Memorial
Joseph
Fournier
UMass Memorial
Joseph
Frawley
MassDOT
Lisa
Gillum
UMass Memorial
Steve
Hayes
UMass Memorial
Sharon
Hayes
UMass Memorial
Theresa
Hicks
UMass Memorial Development
Margaret
Hudlin
UMass Memorial
Cathy
Jewell
UMass Memorial
Mary
Keefe
State Representative
Ken
Lebetin
UMass Memorial
Rich
Lennox
WSP Sells
Gwen
Marshall
UMass Memorial
James
O’Day
State Representative
Phillip
Palmieri
City Councilor
Kim
Puntini
Worcester Housing Authority
Scott
Reynolds
UMass Memorial
Jon
Sewell
UMass Memorial
Michael
Sherman
UMass Memorial
Mickey
Splaine
MassDOT
Dana
Swenson
UMass Memorial
Judy
Taylor-Patch
UMass Memorial Communication
Diane
Torres
UMass Memorial
Jayna
Turcheck
Worcester Director of Human Rights and Disabilities
Gary
Valcourt
UMass Memorial
Anne
Vinick
Plumley Village
John
Wicks
WSP Sells
Debra
Wooldridge
UMass Memorial
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