We heard from several Swellesley readers in the wake of our post about about a couple of bad accidents on Rte. 9 in Wellesley — these readers are worried that a big new electrical box/traffic control box at the under-construction Kingsbury Street/Rte. 9 intersection could cause more mishaps.
More specifically, they’re referring to a big gray box that blocks the view of drivers looking to make a westbound U-turn on Rte. 9.
“The new transformer box completely blocks oncoming traffic, making it crazy hard to see if it’s safe to pull into the fast lane,” wrote Swellesley reader MW.
Others weighed in on Facebook about this intersection, noting that if you’re not high up in an SUV, or not just plain tall, you’ll have a hard time seeing oncoming traffic around this box.
Christopher Mirick, who shared the accompany photos with us, wrote: “[The new electrical box] is terribly placed and ver dangerous — greatly diminishes the ability to see oncoming traffic.” Mirick also wrote to the Wellesley Police about the situation, and they told him that the state’s Department of Transportation, which is running the project, “is aware of your concerns. Once the new traffic lights become operational on Thursday, Dec. 21, the line of sight of issue will no longer be an issue since the intersection will be controlled.”
While that should be an improvement, concerns remain that the intersection will still be more dangerous than it needs to be, especially if the lights stop working for any reason. “With all due respect to Mass DOT, given all the space available this was probably the worst possible placement, and should never have been approved. Fingers crossed it doesn’t become an issue,” Mirick says.
I drive a low-riding car and am not so tall. It is absolutely impossible to see cars coming from Boston on the west bound side of route 9 at the turn around. The guard rail COMPLETELY blocks my view of the cars coming west when I am in my small car. Are these guard rails set for tall men, like the ATM machines? I can’t reach those, either.
The fact that they insisted on keeping it a “u-turn” kind of situation, rather than the safer, left turn lights says a lot about Wellesley. I think they must have kept the u-turns because the people north of Rte 9 wanted to be able to retain their easier access to town at the expense of every other individual that travels down this state highway on a daily basis. They spent a great deal of money on just giving the old u-turn a facelift. This is in great contrast to the changes they made in Natick at the Oak St./Rte 9 interchange. There is still stopped traffic spillage from the u-turn lanes into the travel lanes which is a knock-on danger. There are multiple points of impaired sight (nice to realize that there is now a new one!), in both directions there is the mad dash to quickly get over two lanes to make the turns, and it is a documented fact that u-turns are more dangerous than left turns. It will be interesting to see what happens when they hook up the traffic lights but I just try to avoid the area like the plague.
Do you know whether it is the Town of Wellesley, or a state agency that designs interchanges on a state highway such as Route 9? Until I knew for sure, I would be hesitant to conclude that this traffic design says anything whatsoever about Wellesley.
Also, it seems to me that traffic moves through Wellesley on Route 9 faster than through any of the adjacent towns to the east or west.