Meeting Notes of January 10, 2018 › files › documents › 2018 › 09 › 27 › ... ·...

MEMORANDUM

11 Beacon Street, Suite 1010 | Boston, Massachusetts 02108 | 617.482.7080 www.hshassoc.com

To: Ryan McNeill Date: February 14, 2018 MassDOT

From: Jeff Dietrich HSH Project No.: 2015188 Howard Stein Hudson

Subject: MassDOT I-495/I-90 Interchange Improvements Project #607977 Stakeholder Briefing: Businesses Meeting Notes of January 10, 2018

Overview On January 10, 2018, MassDOT Highway Division, along with representatives from the consultant team associated with the I-495/I-90 Interchange Improvements Project, held a stakeholder briefing to provide an update on the project progress and to introduce its Purpose & Need and Measures of Effectiveness to business stakeholders as well as gather their input.

MassDOT Project Manager Ryan McNeill began the meeting and provided an overview of the project process. A presentation by Joe Cahill of HNTB and Nathaniel Cabral-Curtis of Howard Stein Hudson outlined background and history of the project; Project Purpose & Need including safety, operations, freight movement, and economic development; the ENF-phase alternatives being refined as well as the work completed and upcoming; public outreach; and anticipated schedule and next steps. The team requested that attendees share the WikiMap with their employees and stakeholders, to encourage them to give input, and to request any help that they needed of the project team.

The tone of the discussion was positive, focusing on the alternative concept designs proposed for the interchange and their potential impacts on abutting properties. Kathleen Sousa, Cumberland Farms, expressed a concern about land takings and the proximity of the project to their facility in the northeast quadrant. She committed to sharing information about the recent Cumberland Farms facility improvements and working with the project team as the design of the project progresses. Both Cumberland Farms and Staples committed to sharing the WikiMap and project links to their employees; Staples will further investigate best methods to reach out to contracted and independent truck drivers who deliver to the facility but are not employed by Staples.

Agenda I. Welcome & Opening Remarks ................................................................................................... 2

II. Presentation .................................................................................................................................. 2 III. Discussion ...................................................................................................................................... 8

Detailed Meeting Minutes1 Welcome & Opening Remarks C: Ryan McNeill, MassDOT: Thank you for coming. My name is Ryan McNeill with MassDOT.

We’re here to talk about the 495/90 Interchange Improvements Project. This project is large and complex enough that we’re holding small stakeholder meetings like this one that are focused on particular sectors – geographic, commercial, environmental, government agencies, etc. The purpose of these meetings is to give people an understanding of why we’re doing this project and where we are going. More importantly, we want to hear from you. You may live nearby, and certainly you work here. The businesses represented here have trucks going through the interchange as well as employees going to and from work and maybe also between facilities.

Your understanding of travel patterns and volumes, and where people are going, is really important in helping us develop the concepts we’re looking at and finalizing the design. There are only a few of you so this will be an informal presentation. . If you have a question you can let us know and we can stop. Again, thanks for coming.

Presentation C: Joe Cahill, HNTB: I’m Joe Cahill from HNTB. I’ll be presenting the project in terms of where

we are now. Some of you may be more familiar with the project than others. We want to hear from all of you. Please tell us what you think and what your observations are.

This presentation is the same one from the public information meetings. We had 2 meetings in November. It’s designed for a bigger audience but we wanted to give the same presentation to a smaller group. Our agenda is as follows: Project Team, Project Area, Project Need, Project

1 Herein “C” stands for comment, “Q” for question and “A” for answer. For a list of attendees, please see Appendix 1.

History, Next Steps, and Alternatives Analysis; lastly, Nate will talk about the plan for public outreach. This is the first stakeholder meeting of a set, planned periodically throughout this phase of the project.

Q: Paul Fitzgerald, Dell: How were stakeholders identified?

A: Nate Cabral-Curtis, Howard Stein Hudson: In the case of Dell EMC, I know from my wife, Kate, going back and forth on her commute that you have a fair number of staff passing through the interchange. More scientifically, you’re on the Massachusetts Department of Labor’s ‘Large Employer’ list. We know your office is on the I-495 belt and a lot of your staff and people visiting your building including deliveries go through the interchange. We identified AAA as a stakeholder for obvious reasons. Cumberland Farms is right up against the interchange, have a lot of trucks using the interchange, and are a large employer.

C: Joe Cahill: I’ll go over the project team. The MassDOT Highway Division is the project proponent. The Federal Highway Administration is involved as well as the lead federal agency. They’ll be doing general oversight and NEPA compliance. I’m from HNTB; we’re the lead consultant along with a team of sub-consultants: Tetra Tech is doing design elements, stormwater design, and environmental documentation; Howard Stein Hudson is doing public involvement and traffic; HMMH is working on noise; and Green International is doing engineering support and survey.

Here are the project limits. You can see the interchange in the middle. I-90 goes west to east, and I-495 goes north/south. Route 9 is to the north, as well as the Cumberland Farms site and the CSX TRANSFLO facility. We recognize that the acceleration and deceleration lanes have impacts up and down I-90 and I-495, so the project limits encompass this whole area.

We have a map of environmental concerns within the area. There are lots of colors on here. The Cedar Swamp ACEC (Area of Critical Environmental Concern) is denoted with an orange line. As you know, there are wetlands throughout the area. The highways essentially bisect a wetland area. There are flood plains, the Sudbury River, and Atlantic White Cedars. As we go through the design, we’ll work to minimize impacts to the extent practicable.

We’ve identified four key needs of this project: safety, operations, freight movement, and economic development. We’ll touch on each.

In terms of safety, this is a high crash location. There were 460 crashes at this interchange between 2011 and 2015. That’s a crash every three to four days. This includes a couple of

fatalities. The geometric and operational deficiencies of the interchange are a big contributor to this. The design speeds through the ramps are low, and even with the toll plaza eliminated, the weaving movement through the old toll plaza area is tough. We’ve highlighted some of those areas on this map. We have a weave section where substandard deceleration lanes merge together. The high volume of traffic entering on a low speed curve and short deceleration lanes contribute to rear end collisions.

Q: Drew Carlson, AAA: How has that been since the toll plaza was removed?

A: Ryan McNeill: The data is not available yet. It’s still a new condition, but we’ve been collecting data since the toll plaza removal. We went back out in November to collect all new traffic data, but safety data is not available yet.

C: Joe Cahill: There are also operational needs for the project. This interchange obviously handles a large amount of commuter traffic. It also handles a lot of weekend and summer traffic. As I mentioned with safety issues, we routinely see traffic backups on the mainline highways impacting operation there as well. Even beyond this interchange, congestion routinely radiates out, impacting operations at the Route 9 / I-495 interchange. You can see why. We’re handling 75,000 vehicles per day in the interchange. There are 100,000 vehicles on I-90 and 110,000 on I-495. That’s a lot of traffic.

Third is the need to support freight movement. There is a lot of regional truck traffic coming through this interchange. In fact, approximately half of all trucks entering eastern Massachusetts use this interchange. I-495 is known as Boston’s distribution belt. We have abutters including the CSX facility and Cumberland Farms. This slide shows where the interchange is in relation to the state’s freight network.

Next is economic development. The interchange needs to function properly to support economic growth. This map was pulled from the 495/90 MetroWest Development Compact Plan. The areas in orange are priority development areas. You can see the interchange right there. It needs to function properly, both regionally and locally, in order to support economic development.

The purpose of the project as we’ve defined it is to provide a safe and efficient system interchange of these two nationally and regionally significant interstate highways.

We also have an opportunity now that the toll plazas are gone. Before electronic tolling, I-90 funneled traffic through the central toll plazas. We don’t have to do that anymore, so we have more flexibility to reconfigure the interchange.

In 2013, the I-495 / Route 9 Improvements Study recommended looking at the I-495 / I-90 interchange. That study was completed in November 2015. The Environmental Notification Form (ENF) for this project was filed in 2015. The ENF recommended three alternatives for consideration. That is the starting point for design. I’m not sure how many of you have seen these. This was Concept 14-4. It’s a major interchange similar to what exists there now, but the westbound to southbound and northbound to eastbound movements are put as direct ramp connections. There would be a flyover bridge from I-90 Westbound to I-495 Southbound.

Concept 14-5 is similar and adds an additional ramp in the northeast quadrant from I-90 Westbound to I-495 Northbound. That eliminates the need for the tight loop ramp down there.

The last alternative is a larger one, Concept 22-3. It has an added direct connection from I-90 Eastbound to I-495 Northbound with a long flyover ramp. It would also add a direct loop ramp from I-495 Northbound to I-90 Westbound, and a southbound to westbound connection.

We’re currently refining the alternatives. We took this northbound to westbound ramp out and provided a direct connection from I-495 Northbound like that to I-90 Westbound, allowing us to pull that westbound to northbound ramp in closer.

Q: Maureen Chlebek, McMahon2: All options have an I-495 north to I-90 east direct connection?

A: Ryan McNeill: Yes.

Q: Maureen Chlebek: When you take that northbound to westbound ramp out and replace it with a direct connection, is the new ramp in a similar location to where it is shown in Concept 14-5?

A: Joe Cahill: Yes, the concepts all handle that ramp similarly. This is being forced out because of the loop. We went back out to measure new traffic volumes after the toll removal construction was complete. We’ve collected that data and we’re analyzing it, and using it to tweak the alternatives. We’re not ready to put them out yet, but that’s a taste of what they will be.

A: Ryan McNeill: These were the alternatives in the ENF. They’ll be modified and refined based on newer data and further depth of analysis. We’re only showing these because we’re not quite ready to show the rest of the alternatives. Again this is similar to the general public presentation. We’ll ask for more of your time again when we’ve made refinements to the alternatives.

2 McMahon serves as a consultant to Cumberland Farms.

Q: Maureen Chlebek: Is there a fourth alternative?

A: Ryan McNeill: There is a fourth.

Q: Maureen Chlebek: Is it pretty different than these three?

A: Ryan McNeill: Alternative C-2 is pretty similar.

A: Joe Cahill: C-2 is different from Alternative 22-3. It’s more scaled back. What we’re trying to do with the alternatives we’re developing is handle all of the movements down here in an area that is already on retained fill, so that we’re not placing more fill into wetlands. It does have a westbound to northbound connection. It eliminates one or possibly both loop ramps, and handles most movements down here, except for the westbound to northbound movement.

C: Joe Cahill: Now onto the scope of the project. We’ve completed a Road Safety Audit. The Architectural & Historic review and survey are nearly complete. I mentioned the traffic status: we collected new data and are working through it now. We have an initial safety analysis, which we’ll revise when we have more data. We have been refining alternatives based on the new traffic analysis. We’ve been identifying wetland resources and doing inventories of culverts. There is a lot of data collection for this period of time. We’ve also been starting to work through the Measures of Effectiveness (MOE) table. It will be populated as we finish alternatives and assess their impacts. That will lead to a selection of a preferred alternative, and then we’ll do the environmental fillings and eventually a 25% design.

I’ll go through a general schedule. We are in the phase of refining alternatives and doing an alternatives analysis. We’ll reach a point where we recommend a preferred alternative. We’re hoping to come out of the spring or early summer with that. Then we’ll roll into MEPA/NEPA environmental permitting and the 25% design phase. The plan is for this to be a Design-Build project. There will be a selection of a Design-Build team and they will do the final design and construction. Right now we’re saying the project will be complete in 2024-25 but we’re still trying to figure out how long it will take to construct. Obviously the duration of construction will be based on which alternative is chosen.

Now onto project funding. This is what is currently in the STIP for 2020, 2021 and 2022. You can see it’s phased over years. There is an 80% federal match for roadway funding. We also have funding from the tolls on I-90. This is roughly $130 million, so more will be needed in the later years. Construction will go beyond 2022, so funding will be programmed to fill those years.

C: Ryan McNeill: To stress the point, the STIP only goes through 2022. That’s why dollars are only programmed through 2022. The STIP does indicate that more is needed. The creators of the STIP recognize that they’re not done funding this project.

C: Joe Cahill: So our next steps include refining alternatives. We’re trying to gather as much input from the public as we can and integrate that input into the concepts. Then we’ll work on the Measures of Effectiveness (MOE) matrix and cost/benefit impacts. That will populate the MOE matrix, which will feed into the selection of a preferred alternative. Later, Nate will get into public outreach and how you can help.

For the alternatives analysis, the Measures of Effectiveness categories that we will be weighing the alternatives against include safety, geometric features, impacts on mobility and operations, and environmental considerations. I mentioned earlier that this is an environmentally sensitive area: there are wetlands all around the interchange. There are construction challenges including potentially multi-level flyovers and constructing an interchange while trying to keep it within the existing footprint as much as we can. That will present challenges that factor into construction duration and costs.

C: Ryan McNeill: When we fully populate the MOE matrix based on our data, we’ll use it internally to make an educated decision. We will also present that to you at the next stakeholder meeting so that people can provide input on that as well.

C: Nate Cabral-Curtis: We’ve held two Public Information Meetings in the two towns that directly abut the interchange. For stakeholder outreach we have a number of groups coming in including town officials, environmental organizations and others.

This is the project website, which some of you are already familiar with. The project email goes to me, Ryan, and the MassDOT legislative liaison for the project, Donny Dailey. As Maureen can attest, when we receive an email, I immediately begin generating a response so that we can be as responsive as possible.

Over 2017 and 2018 we’ll have a total of three Public Information meetings, three stakeholder briefings, and three agency coordination meetings. Then we’ll have a MEPA hearing and then the 25% Design Public Hearing. And here is a sample of the stakeholder groups we’re reaching out to. This is a sample of a map that shows a location where there is a stakeholder. The colors mean different types of stakeholders.

So here’s what we’re doing with the WikiMap. I know a lot of you are thinking of your employees or your drivers. They’re not necessarily residents in these towns. They’re not going to hang around in the evening to go to a meeting. So one of the things we’re trying to do through our outreach is get public input in a way that helps us to overlap both the driver’s experience and the technical data. We’re trying to extend the outreach to people who can’t or won’t come to a meeting. In order to capture more people we’ve also placed informational boards and fact sheets at the nearby Turnpike service plazas.

This is the WikiMap. Each one of you has on your facet sheet the WikiMap address. I humbly request that you share the address; if necessary I can draft an email for you to send to Dell EMC employees, AAA members, Staples employees, etc.

We’ve had reasonable success so far in getting people to participate, but I want to reach out to the major employers in order to hear from the people who drive through the interchange every day. If you need any help with that, we’d be happy to help, and we’d love your help in pushing it out to your staff and drivers.

Lastly, that’s the contact information and the website.

Discussion Q: Kathleen Sousa, Cumberland Farms: Sometime last year we had a site visit. We had

provided a lot of informational maps and plans to Renata. Do you have all of those?

A: Ryan McNeill: Yes I think. Is it easily packagable so you can easily send it again?

C: Kathleen Sousa: It was sent electronically so I can send it again. Over the last five years we’ve invested over $30 million in our Westborough facility. So we have a very serious concern as to what may be proposed there, in terms of how close it will be and how much land taking there may be. That’s what I’m concerned with. That’s why I’m here.

C: Ryan McNeill: And we are here to hear that. I’ve been the project manager for about three months. I took over when Renata moved on to the Air Force. Your concern has been conveyed to the project team but I’m not remembering seeing specific documents. We’ve heard about the concerns about the volume of that taking.

C: Joe Cahill: Through every discussion we’ve had in developing the concepts, it’s been on everyone’s minds, especially that northeast quadrant. We’re trying to minimize impacts as much

as possible, as we referenced in the presentation. We’ve tried to move those ramps in to minimize impacts.

C: Kathleen Sousa: We did meet with MassDOT in Boston as well. We presented our plans and our concerns with the interchange project. This goes back to 2015. Our most recent expansion has been since then.

C: Ryan McNeill: Any more recent data you can give us would be useful too.

C: Kathleen Sousa: We’re anxious to see that fourth concept.

C: Joe Cahill: It’s still being refined, but I will say that the north-west connection is still there.

C: Kathleen Sousa: When you showed the environmental maps, it was hard to understand what the hierarchy is. What’s not touchable?

A: Ryan McNeill: They’re all fairly important. There is some hierarchy, but the difference between most of these areas is very tight. The majority of the area is in the Cedar Swamp Area of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC). That raises the project to a higher level from the perspective of the DCR and MassDEP. This is the first ACEC in the entire state so the environmental agencies are very focused on this.

Q: Kathleen Sousa: Do any traffic improvements from switching to all-electronic tolling have a bearing on the concepts?

A: Ryan McNeill: Everything was fully constructed at the end of October or early November and we conducted new traffic counts at that time. If those counts show different volumes or trends than the counts we have from previous years then it’s possible that changes will be made. I don’t think it’s likely, but it’s possible. We will have very up-to-date data soon.

A: Joe Cahill: We have preliminary numbers but they’re not showing any significant changes. The general patterns seem to still exist.

A: Ryan McNeill: People still want to get from where they are to where they want to go.

Q: Kathleen Sousa: Does cost impact the selection of the Preferred Alternative?

A: Ryan McNeill: That is part of the MOE matrix. The concepts are still in an early stage, so it’s difficult to get an exact estimate of the cost, but the costs range from $160 to $350 million.

Q: Maureen Chlebek: Are socioeconomic impacts considered as well?

A: Ryan McNeill: Yes, as well as Right of Way.

C: Maureen Chlebek: Saying they’re all equally important almost lends to staying in areas that already have highways. You’re in a tough spot because there is so much around you.

A: Ryan McNeill: You’re right, and part of the reason the interchange doesn’t work well is because it puts all of the movements in that one corner. Ideally we would build the interchange in the middle of a field in Iowa and we could make it perfect, but we have these constraints. We have to balance operations, safety, cost and impacts.

C: Joe Cahill: A big part of the problem is the weave issue, so as much as you can take the movements out of the weave area the better it is for all of them. Right now, everyone’s forced through a central location. We have to pull the movements out in order to make the interchange better and safer.

C: Nate Cabral-Curtis: Having worked on the removal of the other toll plazas, everyone says, “it’s so much better now that you took the toll plaza out”. Well, I went through there in December right at peak hour and it’s awful. It’s not that everyone didn’t give their all, but it’s still a lot of weaving to accomplish in a very short space.

C: Paul Fitzgerald: It’s still awful, it’s just faster now. Some of the earlier presentations we saw on this noted a potential need for public-private funding. What do you expect in terms of funding on this? Do you anticipate there will be outreach to businesses to secure more funding?

A: Ryan McNeill: I don’t have the answer for you.

C: Paul Fitzgerald: That was probably 3 or 4 years ago.

A: Ryan McNeill: That’s a conversation we have at MassDOT for a lot of our projects now. It’s a new and innovative funding method that is talked about a lot but I haven’t heard any specific ideas. I would say it’s possible but it hasn’t been identified and it’s not part of the project team’s focus. We’re focused on design and public outreach. We’re not focused as much on funding yet.

Q: Paul Fitzgerald: I have a question about the WikiMap itself. How much control do you have on the map itself? I noticed there are errors in the way some roads are labeled.

A: Nate Cabral-Curtis: Anything labeled on here is pulled in from the cloud. I suppose our graphics people might be able to go in there and make changes, but that’s not something we created.

C: Ryan McNeill: So going forward, we’re working hard back at the office analyzing data, refining the design, running modeling, filling in the measures of effectiveness. The expectation is that 2-3-4 months from now we’ll be ready to present again. It’ll be in draft form at that point because we do want your thoughts and we’re going to show it to the public and stakeholders. At that point we’ll take the matrix and all of your input and go to the administration with a recommendation. The expectation is that after that we will come out again with the Preferred Alternative.

Q: Nate Cabral-Curtis: Since you both took the time to come out here, any thoughts from AAA or Staples?

C: Drew Carlson: This is actually my first week so I’m taking notes and passing them along.

C: Ryan McNeill: If there’s anything you think you need from us–assistance with materials or anything—just let us know.

C: Kathleen Sousa: I can include the WikiMap in an email in the morning.

C: Courtney Goldberg, Staples: We can post the WikiMap to our internal website.

C: Nate Cabral-Curtis: Thanks so much.

C: Courtney Goldberg: We need to send an internal newsletter and can include it in there as well. For getting information to truckers, I will have to talk to our client contact. I can only take care of the people who work at Staples.

A: Nate Cabral-Curtis: We were going to have the Massachusetts Motor Vehicle Association here, too, but unfortunately they couldn’t send anyone, so we’re going to go see them independently next week.

Q: Courtney Goldberg: I have one question. I don’t know the area that well. On a slide you mention improving the interchange freeing up space for commuter rail trains. Does that mean there would be more trains at this stop in the future?

A: Nate Cabral-Curtis: I won’t speak for MBTA service planning, but as you may know, CSX moved out of Boston. Part of the reason was to free up capacity for commuter trains between Boston and points west. This TRANSFLO facility is a drop off point for CSX. The last miles of their routes into Boston are handled with trucks, which frees up rail capacity. They want their trucks to be able to get on the road effectively. If they get to the point where they need to add 45 minutes to every trip for trucks to get through the interchange you could envision a situation in which CSX might want to move freight trains back into Boston.

C: Courtney Goldberg: There’s been discussion about the Fitchburg line. Having more trains on the Commuter Rail line would help people coming from the west.

A: Ryan McNeill: We agree with you; or at least I do, I won’t speak for the Department in this case. But in order for that to happen, we need to make sure trucks can travel through the interchange as efficiently as possible.

C: Kathleen Sousa: For anyone who wasn’t on the site visit, if you’d like to come by at any time let me know. I think it was helpful to have you come through the facility. You can see the operation with trucks and delivery and everything that goes on 24/7.

A: Ryan McNeill: Can I get a golf cart ride and wait until spring?

C: Kathleen Sousa: Yeah. It might be helpful to take a short visit.

C: Nate Cabral Curtis: Joe has the notes from the first visit.

C: Ryan McNeill: Thank you all for coming. If you ever have questions please reach out to any of us.

Next Steps This series of stakeholder briefings will continue through January 2018. A round of public information meetings is anticipated in the spring.

The schedule for permitting and preliminary design anticipates three rounds of public information meetings; targeted briefings; and internal and agency coordination meetings. Further in the project, a MEPA meeting, Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR), 25% Design Public Hearing, federal environmental permitting, and Design/Build procurement are all anticipated. Construction and final

design will proceed in parallel once a Design/Build contractor is selected; construction estimates will be created as the design progresses.

Public involvement will continue throughout all phases of the project. More information, past presentations, information regarding the history of the project including the ENF phase of work, and contact information is available at the project webpage: mass.gov/massdot/495-90interchange

Appendix 1: Meeting Attendees First Name Last Name Affiliation

Hannah Brockhaus Howard Stein Hudson

Nate Cabral-Curtis Howard Stein Hudson

Joe Cahill HNTB

Drew Carlson AAA

Maureen Chlebek McMahon Associates (consultant to Cumberland Farms)

Paul Fitzgerald Dell

Courtney Goldberg Staples

Ryan McNeill MassDOT

Kathleen Sousa Cumberland Farms

Meeting Notes of January 10, 2018 › files › documents › 2018 › 09 › 27 › ... ·...

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Transcript of Meeting Notes of January 10, 2018 › files › documents › 2018 › 09 › 27 › ... ·...