Above: The weekend projects to replace overpasses in town this summer will be paused for 4th of July travel. (image of Cordaville roadwork from last week cropped from tweet by MassDOT)
This holiday weekend, construction crews will take a break from the summer-long weekend work to replace MassPike bridges in and near Southborough.
Work had taken place for the past two weekends, requiring lane reductions on the Pike and detours on town roads. The project will resume on Friday, July 9th with the replacement of westbound spans of the Parkerville Road and Flanders Road bridges.
According to a media report, it will also include paving of the Cordaville Road bridge. (That wouldn’t impact the local road, but does impact overhead lane closures.)
In the near term, take care when crossing the newly installed spans on MassPike West over Woodland and Cordaville roads. WBZ Channel 4’s CBS Boston News looked into a viewer’s complaint about bumpy transitions:
“Those bridges are terrible,” said Phil Sandock. “They are almost like giant speed bumps. Threw all the stuff in the back of my truck up in the air,” he added.
We sent a news crew to check out those bridges on I-90 over Woodland Road and over Cordaville Road in Southboro. Video from inside the news car shows the vehicle taking a significant jolt as it crosses over one of the new bridges.
We reached out to MassDOT for answers. A spokesperson told us there is still work to be completed on the bridges, including waterproofing and paving, as well as additional barriers.
“The transitions to and from the new Cordaville Road Bridge deck can cause a ‘bump’ sensation for vehicles traveling at high speeds. Paving of the Cordaville Road Bridge is scheduled to be completed during the next weekend of bridgework, July 9 through July 11. In the interim, MassDOT has installed advance warning signs to alert drivers ahead of the transition,” said MassDOT spokesperson Jacquelyn Goddard.
Our crew said they were not traveling at a high rate of speed.
After we contacted MassDOT, a spokesperson emailed us again to say, “Additional signs will be added on I-90 westbound, specifically entering the bridge. The additional signs and VMS board will alert drivers, and we encourage them to reduce their speed when driving over the bridge.”
According to Goddard, the additional work will eliminate the bump in the road.
To watch the news report, click here.
Last week, I shared photos of the Woodland bridge replacement in action. To check out photos of the Cordaville Road work, click the following links for last weekend’s tweets by MassDOT and staff.
