UPDATED: Construction on I-91 causes traffic gridlock
NORTHAMPTON - A combination of ongoing road construction, police efforts to determine the cause of an early-morning double fatality on Interstate 91, and regular Friday traffic flow resulted in miles of traffic headaches for commuters for much of Friday.
State police Friday afternoon said the mess on ongoing construction work that has closed one southbound lane of the busy highway.
In addition, State Police Trooper William Loiselle, working out of the Northampton State Police barracks said there was an accident reconstruction team on the scene trying to determine the cause of the crash.
"That combined with heavy Friday night traffic," said Loiselle, led to the near gridlock driving conditions.
Earlier in the afternoon said State Police Trooper Adam Mathieu, said the ongoing road construction was also adding to the trouble.
"Normally they close the work down by now but it's still tied up out there," he said around 3:40 p.m. "It may be because of the snow on the way that they're doing more over there. It's not good."
Mathieu said the slowdown began around 10 a.m. and affected traffic for a six mile-long stretch of I-91 between Exits 19 and 16. By late afternoon, no accidents had been reported as a result of the tieup, but spillover traffic was creating problems on Route 5 between Northampton and Holyoke.
Police did not set up any official detours.
Comments
If you pay attention
You will see that work is indeed going on at night on these sites. It is a round the clock effort to complete the job. Also, it isn't exactly the work that is causing the back-up, but the stubbornness of drivers to merge early to form one lane of traffic. If people would just merge when the signs advise them to, rather than zip up the right lane to avoid the lane that is at a standstill- that lane at a standstill would indeed be moving!
PLEASE STOP THIS!
It's gotten to the point where even the State Police do not know what Mass Highway is doing with these roads.
The situation on I-91 is a disgrace. Most of the time there is relatively little work being done, but miles of lane closures and backups. Why can't this be scheduled in the evening and night hours?
First we had months of traffic problems because of the new guard rails (which already look worthless in several areas after being hit) and the Easthampton bridge. Now it's bridge work in Holyoke and who knows what else?
Can some public servant figure this all out and solve it?
We simply can not have I-91 turned into gridlock for so many hours on so many days.