Safetee wrote: ↑Sun Nov 24, 2019 4:41 pm
If mass dot would make rte 2 a four lane federal standard highway from greenfield to templeton and then figure a way to eliminate all the road jams east of fitchburg, almost nobody would even mention wanting a rail service solution. but mass dot doesnt even want to talk about route 2 because after all, it's west of 495. obviously some transport wizards seemed to think that the people in Greenfield want and need to go south instead of east. and the reason is, they just spent tons of mostly federal money on the conn river and now they want to get more action out of that investment. well, if just the vermonter couldn't justify the cost, maybe they should have left it running through amherst to palmer.
It would cost Mass probably billions of dollar to add more lanes on Route 2. Typically a state has rail-centric transportation policy preference or highway car centric preference, but not both. Mass has to go rail or highways , pick only one. It sounds like Mass is like CT on rail.
CT policy preference is pretty clear, rail rail and rail. CT has three rail lines covering the whole state from east to west, from south to north. Highways in CT will stay as it is , two or three lanes, no expansion other than maybe bridge or choke point improvement in CT2030.