Massachusetts Highway Department

Former logo of the Massachusetts Highway Department

The Massachusetts Highway Department (MassHighway) was the former name of the highway department in the United States Commonwealth of Massachusetts from 1991 until it became the highway division of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) on November 1, 2009.^[1] The responsibilities of MassHighway included the design, construction and maintenance of all state highways and bridges and signage of numbered routes. During that time it was a part of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Transportation (EOT), which was also reorganized into the Department of Transportation. As part of the reorganization, the separate Massachusetts Turnpike Authority was dissolved and its duties assumed by the MassDOT highway division.^[1]

The department was split into five district offices managed by a District Highway Director (DHD) under the supervision of the Chief Engineer at MassHighway headquarters in Boston. This district plan has been continued under MassDOT with tentative plans to reconfigure the Boston area for a sixth district in 2010.^[2]

The Massachusetts Highway Department conducts an annual traffic data collection program. A traffic counting program is conducted each year by the Statewide Traffic Data Collection section of the Massachusetts Highway Department. This data is available online by autoroute and city/town list or as an interactive map. The 2009 program involved the systematic collection of traffic data utilizing automatic traffic recorders located on various roadways throughout the state.^[3]

History

The Massachusetts Highway Commission was established in 1893 with three commissioners appointed by the governor. It was responsible for assisting local governments with road design, construction, mapping and organization.^[4] The commission was replaced in 1919 by the Massachusetts Department of Public Works (DPW), which became the main state agency overseeing all aspects of road construction and maintenance.^[5] The DPW was renamed the Massachusetts Highway Department in 1991.^[6]

Herald survey showed 3124 vehicles per day using the Southeast Expressway (Boston)'s zipper lane - far short of the Massachusetts Highway Department's projection of 4900 daily at the lane's opening in November 1995. More than two years after its opening, the lane has failed to attract the numbers of carpoolers hoped for by planners and continues to feed the anger of motorists banned from the high occupancy vehicle lane. The survey number is also at the low end of the Highway Department's current claim of 3000 to 3500 vehicles per day, a number that includes maintenance vehicles and police cars. The Herald survey counted 50 police cars in the lane in the morning commute. ^[7]

The Massachusetts Highway Department experienced its first consultation with MCIA under the unmarked Burial Law in 1985 with the discovery of a partially marked and partially unmarked poor farm cemetery in the Route of 146 project area in Uxbridge (Elia and Wesolowsky 1989, 1991). Its second consultation occurred in 1992, after the discovery of a Middle Archaic (ca. 8,000 years ago) burial by the Public Archaeology Laboratory, Inc., during archaeological data recovery for the Route 44 project in Carver (Doucette and Cross 1997' Doucette 1997; Doucette 2003).^[8]

The French King Bridge is owned and managed by the Massachusetts Highway Department. It opened on September 10, 1932, crossing the Connecticut River by connecting the towns of Erving, Massachusetts and Gill, Massachusetts.

Flag Desecration

On December 4, 2007, the Massachusetts Highway Department issued an order to workers to remove American flags and other patriotic tributes on highway overpasses. State officials said they are concerned the flags and signs could fall on drivers, causing an accident. The state did not have a planned time line to enforce the ban, but Mass Highway indicated that workers would be removing the flags and anything else hanging over bridges and overpasses in upcoming weeks.

However, when Mass Highway Commissioner Luisa Paiewonsky said that the new edict applies to all signs on bridges over highways, she was not singling out people who would like to express their patriotism by constructing memorials to the war in Iraq or Afghanistan, but rather applying some kind of reasonable standard about public safety. Of course, the December 4 edict by the Mass Highway department that forbade “patriotic tributes” and flag displays—and peace signs and rock-star banners and whatever else somebody might decide to post in public spaces—was upsetting to the people who put up the displays.

Public fury by a select group of people led to an immediate reversal order issued by the Governor’s office. On December 5, Masschusetts Governor Deval Patrick overturned the Mass Highway edict and declared that the flag displays could remain.^[9]

References

1. ^ ^{a b} "Welcome to MassDOT - About US". Commonwealth of Massachusetts. 2009. http://www.massdot.state.ma.us/main/MassDOTAboutUs.aspx. Retrieved 2009-11-05. 
2. ^ http://www.mhd.state.ma.us/default.asp?pgid=dist/distRoot&sid=wrapper&iid=dist/dist.asp About the Districts retrieved 3 April 2009
3. ^ http://www.mhd.state.ma.us/default.asp?pgid=content/traffic01&sid=about
4. ^ Public documents of Massachusetts. 12, part 2. Boston: Secretary of the Commonwealth. 1895. http://books.google.com/books?id=BMYWAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA4-PA62. Retrieved 2009-11-07. 
5. ^ Tsipis, Yanni Kosta; Kruh, David (2003). Building Route 128. Images of America. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing. pp. 7. ISBN 9780738511634. OCLC 52578034. http://books.google.com/books?id=mmGEFXOsGkIC&pg=PA7. Retrieved 2009-11-07. 
6. ^ "1991 Chapter 0552. An Act Changing The Name Of The Department Of Public Works To The Highway Department.". Boston: Secretary of the Commonwealth. 1991. http://archives.lib.state.ma.us/handle/2452/10850. Retrieved 2009-11-07. 
7. ^ http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/bostonherald/access/27412150.html?dids=27412150:27412150&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=Mar+16%2C+1998&author=Robin+Washington&pub=Boston+Herald&desc=Commuters%2C+critics+zap+costly+zipper+lane&pqatl=google
8. ^ http://books.google.com/books?id=TOsXlOFwqBIC&pg=PT86&sig=-LIB5zpYxL6hyhSPr1YuTJui9LU&hl=en#v=onepage&q=massachusetts%20highway%20department&f=false
9. ^ http://dissidentvoice.org/2008/02/former-teacher-arrested-for-burning-us-flags