MBTA Hosting Huge Recycling Event at the Watertown Bus Yard

Bring your electronics, appliances, clothes, metal and more to the event on May 11.

  The MBTA will host a recycling event where residents can bring a wide variety of items, including electronics, metal, clothes and much more. The event will be at the Watertown Bus Yard, at Galen and Water streets in Watertown, on Saturday, May 11 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Residents of all towns are welcome, according to an information poster from the Massachusetts Department of Transportation. Items taken at the event will not end up in landfill, according to the MassDOT. Televisions cost 35 cents per pound to recycle, and everything else will be accepted for free, according to the announcement. Here are items that will be accepted:             Items that will NOT be accepted: wood, glass, hazardous materials, paint, tires, liquids, …

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Don't Drive on Route 128's Breakdown Lane

MassDOT announced today that driving on the Route 128 breakdown lane has been discontinued as a fourth travel lane is open.

Don't Drive on Route 128's Breakdown Lane

MassDOT announced today that driving on the Route 128 breakdown lane has been discontinued as a fourth travel lane is open.

  State Police are now looking out for drivers who use the breakdown lane on Route 128. In an effort to reduce the Route 128 bottlenecks between Route 24 and Route 9, the Mass Department of Transportation (MassDOT) added a fourth travel lane to I-93/95 along that stretch. With that addition, driving in the breakdown lane is now prohibited between Route 24 and Route 109.  Signs along the highways and State Police patrols will inform drivers of the change, according to a MassDOT announcement Wednesday. The breakdown lane is now reserved for emergency vehicles and disabled cars.  According to the release, drivers have been able to use the breakdown lane on weekdays at peak hours with permission from the Federal Highway Adinistration since …

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Gas Work Delaying Rockland Street Bridge Opening

Police say the bridge at Rockland Street will be complete, but not re-open until after works to repair the summer gas main break.

Gas Work Delaying Rockland Street Bridge Opening

Police say the bridge at Rockland Street will be complete, but not re-open until after works to repair the summer gas main break.

  Your car will have to stay off the new Rockland Street bridge, but only for a little while longer.  Wellesley Police told Patch today that the bridge is nearly complete--and expected to finish today--although they do not plan to re-open it until early January.  According to Lt. Jack Polecki, the delay is to repair the gas main break at the end of August. A worker accidentally damaged the line during construction, which National Grid then capped on both ends, intending to return to fully repair the gas line at a later date. The repairs are necessary to maintain gas pressure along the gas main during the coming winter months. Rather than open the newly-completed bridge, only to close it again for these repairs, Polecki says the bridge will…

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Rockland Street Bridge Looking at December Re-Opening

Bridge has been closed since January, was expected to re-open in September.

  After closing to drivers earlier this year, the Rockland Street bridge may soon be passable again. The bridge was initially expected to re-open in September. The Massachusetts Department of Transportation tells the Swellesley Report that the bridge is expected to re-open by the end of the year.  At the Nov. 19 Board of Selectmen meeting, officials said during a traffic study report, that the goal is to re-open the bridge by mid-December. The study aims to streamline traffic lights along Washington and Linden Streets, and will re-examine the Rockland Street intersection after the bridge is open once again.  MassDot announced in May that the cost would increase, in part due to outdated information about the bridge abutments. Bridge …

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Rockland Street Bridge Demolition Continues

The bridge is scheduled to be completely torn down by September.

Activity at the Rockland Street Bridge has been quiet of late – unless you count the driver who attempted to cross it back in February. But according to a police photo from the WPD Facebook page this morning, workers are back at it. The bridge has been closed for all of 2012, and it should be rebuilt by September.

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MassDOT: Rockland Street Bridge Cost Will Increase

MassDOT spokesman Michael Verseckes said the bridge’s completion should still be on schedule.

The Rockland Street Bridge has been blocked off for months without so much as a nail being hammered at the site. But construction activity could return in early June after a plan redesign is completed this week. Due to the redesign, however, the $1.7 million cost of the bridge replacement will likely go up. Massachusetts Department of Transportation spokesman Michael Verseckes said today the cost increase is unknown but will become clear sometimes after the redesign plans are finalized. The project required a new plan after workers found that the bridge abutments were too small. “If we’re looking to place blame on something one can look to the age of the plans to see there was some faulty information we were going off of to begin with,” he…

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Rockland Street Bridge Closes Friday

This marks the second time the start date of the MassDOT project has been pushed back.

According to Massachusetts Department of Transportation, the Rockland Street Bridge will close for demolition and re-construction Friday Jan. 27, marking the second time the construction start date has been pushed back this month. The original bridge closing date was Jan. 6. It was then pushed back to Jan. 13. MassDOT spokesman Michael Verseckes said the second pushback was in part due to a problem with some of the utilities. MassDOT also wanted to make sure relevant town bodies had ample time to prepare for the closing. “I think our wires got crossed with some of the folks in town,” he said. “We just wanted to make sure every body had enough notice and there wasn’t a surprise bridge closing.” Verseckes said he does not anticipate further …

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Mom's Moment

With a Key Bridge Down, Will Traffic Be Up?

Columnist Deb Robi writes about the upsides and downsides of the Rockland Street Bridge closure.

Thank you, MassDOT for giving us plenty of warning as you work to replace the Rockland Street Bridge. Thanks for pushing back the date of closure, too. I need time to ponder how my driving around town will be impacted. I often cross the bridge half a dozen times in a day. That means, I'm either not planning trips around town very well, I have too many children with too many activities, or I keep forgetting an errand in either Wellesley or Linden Squares! Thanks too, for the very attractive footbridge that I know will come in handy for commuters who require daily train station access, bikers, who are doing us all a favor by staying out of their cars, and for students walking to and from school. Thanks for giving residents two extra weeks to…

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