Roads

[mmcirvin]

Boy, this guy's site has a lot of pages about Boston-area roads, with lots of pictures of rotted and confusing signs. I particularly like the page displaying mid-Big Dig chaos around Leverett Circle. (I wonder if people will continue talking about Leverett Circle given that it is a mostly theoretical construct these days. There's a Leverett Circle Connector but there is not really a whole circle. Then again, people still talk about squares where there never was any square, so maybe they will.)

At one point he reveals a secret:

If you're on the Gilmore Bridge, either you weren't paying attention following MA 3, or you're a Boston area native and know that if you follow Memorial Drive into Land Boulevard, you'll get to MA 99 via this bridge, and can then get to US 1 or I-93, depending on which way you turn.

I am not a Boston area native, and I was so proud the night I accidentally discovered that. Not only does it go to US 1 and I-93, it also goes to what eventually becomes Main Street in Malden. Since then, I've thought of the passage over the Gilmore Bridge and up 99 north as my secret hyperspace bypass. That 99 goes through that strange semi-demolished underpass just makes it cooler, though a terrifyingly huge pothole also resurrects itself under there every year and they have to close off the underpass for a while to patch it up.

There is also the strange fact that the Gilmore Bridge does not actually go over water; it's a glorified overpass over a rail yard and remnants of Big Dig construction, near the giant Zakim Bridge interchange. There was once a mostly defunct body of water somewhere around there called the Millers River (the long-term post-Big Dig master plan supposedly involves "restoring it"), but I'm not sure exactly where it flowed from.