PEABODY — After families of the Route 114 victims testified about the highway danger in front of local and state officials in December 2021, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) came up with a set of steps needed to identify potential enhancements and safety countermeasures.
“I think the attention has been increased and I think a lot of that credit goes to the City Council and the families, unfortunately, of a few people who lost their lives on Route 114,” said state Rep. Thomas Walsh (D-Peabody), who together with state Sen. Joan Lovely (D-Salem) and Rep. Sally Kerans (D-Danvers) has been working on getting the state to take action.
Walsh added that safety of the highway has been an issue since he was on the City Council years ago. There have been 16 fatal accidents and 5,542 accidents on Route 114 since 2002, according to the data cited at the December meeting of the City Council safety subcommittee, which was attended by Paul Stedman, director of MassDOT, District 4.
In a letter dated Feb. 9, Stedman notified the state delegation that MassDOT has hired a design consultant, Howard Stein Hudson (HSH), to assist in performing a safety assessment and evaluation of the section of Route 114 from just west of Route 1 in Danvers to just east of Route 128 in Peabody. The letter said that HSH/MassDOT will review the corridor to develop and analyze feasibility of potential safety improvements for immediate, short- and long-term periods.
HSH is currently involved in developing safety and mobility improvements for a section of Route 114 from Sylvan Street to Esquire Drive/Violet Road in Peabody. HSH and MassDOT will conduct an in-depth Road Safety Audit (RSA) of the corridor and develop a detailed, formal report documenting the review process and identifying potential enhancements and safety countermeasures.
Once the report is finalized, MassDOT will coordinate a presentation of the RSA findings to the public to gather feedback and discuss next steps, the letter said.
On Feb. 16, representatives of the Town of Danvers, City of Peabody, Danvers Police Department, MassDOT and the state delegation met to discuss the Route 114 Road Safety Audit. They went over major concerns and discussed glaring problems and items that could be addressed fairly quickly, Walsh said.
“Some of that is painting and signage and things like that,” said Walsh.
The participants of the meeting also considered long-term safety improvements.
“It’s going to take a few months to make determinations as far as what would be needed, what are the best solutions and then how we accomplish that,” said Walsh.
The short-term improvements, such as painting lane markers, are not terribly expensive to do, Walsh said, and the simple things can be done within a few months. Then the experts should look at the timing of traffic signals, Walsh said, and get into the bigger issues like the center lane that people use for turning, which is a concern for many of the neighbors.
“If it’s determined that there needs to be construction, then it’s a bigger issue of determining a funding source,” said Walsh.
Possible construction will require further review of the environmental impacts to the area as well.
“All those things have to be worked out and figured out: how best to make the roads safer, while at the same time keeping traffic flowing,” said Walsh.
Ward 5 Councilor David Gamache said that he is relying on the state delegation and Walsh and waiting for the preliminary plan that MassDOT is going to put forward.
“These things, especially at the state level, tend to take a little bit more time than they would at the local level,” Gamache said.
He is hoping that, by early-to-middle March, stakeholders will be able to look at what MassDOT is proposing and, based on data, try to come up with a solution.
