This is a FANTASTIC article. As a lover of our local history and an employee for the Town of Fairhaven for nearly 10 years, I think this is a valuable discussion for our community. If you’re interested, maybe an appearance on Fairhaven TV’s public access channel would get more residents thinking about this. Feel free to shoot me an email at abotelho@fairhaven-ma.gov if you’d like to talk more about it. - Alyssa Botelho, video producer
What's maddening about this is the history of why it became such a STROAD and that this history is the reason it should now NOT be a STROAD. 195 was completed in 1974 when I was 13 years old, so I remember the effect it had on US 6. We sailed in Marion every weekend since I was about 2 years old and before 195 went through, there was a LOT of traffic on 6 going to the cape so there was a lot of pressure to expand the road for throughput. Once 195 went through, basically any through traffic went there and offloaded most of the traffic (and killed a ton of local business too). Given this, it has always astounded me that Fairhaven, Mattapoisett, Marion and Wareham wouldn't revert it to a local design. Mattapoisett has gone to 3 lanes in one section and I understand Marion is considering a road diet. This should be de rigueur for the entire length of it. And you are right Dartmouth is a mess, I have had to ride my bike on it for stretches in the last few years and it sucks.
Yeah I left out that more recent history but it's another great argument for why Rte 6 does not need to be a highway within town limits. 195 is a perfectly serviceable highway, only a mile to the north of the center of town. Route 6 doesn't need to compete on providing throughput.
Chris Richards also shared a picture of an info booth the Improvement Association built near where the high school is. The booth provided info about town for the Cape vacationers you mention but was destroyed in the hurricane of 1930.
I'd love to team up with a good tech/data person to create something that could measure the "stroadification" of a town (maybe using google maps?) by looking at the proportion of roads within towns that have stroad features. I had a friend who mapped scallop habitat on the ocean floor by looking at patterns there-- perhaps there's a way to do this with stroads?! Then we could publish Stroad Scores for towns (like what Buzzards Bay Coalition does with water quality) and look at correlations with financial solvency etc. On second thought, perhaps this is focusing on the negative and we should just measure walkable downtown strength instead.
This is a FANTASTIC article. As a lover of our local history and an employee for the Town of Fairhaven for nearly 10 years, I think this is a valuable discussion for our community. If you’re interested, maybe an appearance on Fairhaven TV’s public access channel would get more residents thinking about this. Feel free to shoot me an email at abotelho@fairhaven-ma.gov if you’d like to talk more about it. - Alyssa Botelho, video producer
Thanks, Alyssa! Will do
What's maddening about this is the history of why it became such a STROAD and that this history is the reason it should now NOT be a STROAD. 195 was completed in 1974 when I was 13 years old, so I remember the effect it had on US 6. We sailed in Marion every weekend since I was about 2 years old and before 195 went through, there was a LOT of traffic on 6 going to the cape so there was a lot of pressure to expand the road for throughput. Once 195 went through, basically any through traffic went there and offloaded most of the traffic (and killed a ton of local business too). Given this, it has always astounded me that Fairhaven, Mattapoisett, Marion and Wareham wouldn't revert it to a local design. Mattapoisett has gone to 3 lanes in one section and I understand Marion is considering a road diet. This should be de rigueur for the entire length of it. And you are right Dartmouth is a mess, I have had to ride my bike on it for stretches in the last few years and it sucks.
Yeah I left out that more recent history but it's another great argument for why Rte 6 does not need to be a highway within town limits. 195 is a perfectly serviceable highway, only a mile to the north of the center of town. Route 6 doesn't need to compete on providing throughput.
Chris Richards also shared a picture of an info booth the Improvement Association built near where the high school is. The booth provided info about town for the Cape vacationers you mention but was destroyed in the hurricane of 1930.
I'd love to team up with a good tech/data person to create something that could measure the "stroadification" of a town (maybe using google maps?) by looking at the proportion of roads within towns that have stroad features. I had a friend who mapped scallop habitat on the ocean floor by looking at patterns there-- perhaps there's a way to do this with stroads?! Then we could publish Stroad Scores for towns (like what Buzzards Bay Coalition does with water quality) and look at correlations with financial solvency etc. On second thought, perhaps this is focusing on the negative and we should just measure walkable downtown strength instead.
Wow - that visual of a tangible vision for this problematic stretch!