CRAIGIE DRAWBRIDGE REHABILITATION
MassDOT, Highway Division
Funded by MassDOT’s Accelerated Bridge Program, the $40 million Craigie Drawbridge replacement that will carry Route 28/Monsignor O’Brien Highway over the Charles River is currently under construction. The Drawbridge bascule replacement bridge is a major local transportation link that carries roughly 42,000 vehicles per day and serves as a significant link in the area’s bicycle and pedestrian network. Adding complexity to the project, Craigie Bridge connects Boston to Cambridge via the Charles River Dam Bridge, which provides access to the Museum of Science. Prior to construction, HSH provided the civil engineering and roadway design including sidewalks and other pedestrian amenities, as well as bicycle accommodations from Monsignor O’Brien Highway to Leverett Circle. HSH’s traffic management work included a baseline evaluation of current area automotive, bicycle, and pedestrian conditions used to develop a complex phasing plan to help ease the passage of traffic during construction, temporary signage to guide bridge users, and major changes to the signalization on the bridge and at the intersections at either end of the bridge in Boston and Cambridge.
HSH’s most pivotal role has been leading the traffic management during the construction phase of this project, now underway. To accommodate construction, the Craigie Drawbridge, closed all inbound lanes. To minimize significant traffic impacts, a tremendous amount of planning, preparation, and public outreach was done by a team that included the who’s who of the region’s transportation community. Led by MassDOT, District 6, HSH worked closely with an assembly of agency, neighborhood, and private sector stakeholders to plan this event; particularly the City of Boston, the cities of Cambridge and Somerville, and over six police jurisdictions. Throughout the past six months, HSH engineers led the planning, engineering, and implementation of the traffic management plan (TMP). Once the TMP was implemented, HSH engineers both on the ground and in the BTD traffic control center at City Hall monitored traffic and made quick adjustments to insure that traffic would move smoothly in the first week of closure. The replacement bridge is scheduled to be in place April 2011.
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