Sumner Tunnel closure breeds traffic, worries in East Boston

The Tunnelpocalypse has begun in earnest because the deliberate shutdown of the Sumner led to site visitors traces on Google Maps glowing as offended pink because the faces of East Boston vacationers, and native politicians are pushing for extra efforts to curb the effort.

The Sumner Tunnel, an aged gap that carries Route 1A from Eastie to downtown, closed for the weekend at 11 a.m. Friday and can reopen earlier than rush hour on Monday within the first of 36 weekend closures.

That is the opening salvo of a years-long $160 million Massachusetts Division of Transportation mission to rehab the 87-year-old cramped tunnel that when held bidirectional site visitors when it opened up throughout Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s second time period. Subsequent yr, the disruptions will graduate to a full-time, round the clock closure for a couple of months earlier than dropping again to weekend shutoffs.

The Sumner’s parallel outbound counterpart, the comparatively youthful Callahan Tunnel that was constructed in 1961, stays open, so site visitors coming from downtown up Route 1A into Eastie and past stays largely unmolested.

East Boston is separated from the remainder of the town correct by the Boston Harbor, and whereas it has land connections north up via Revere, it’s virtually an island for antra-city journey to different elements of Boston. The remaining choices for heading west from the neighborhood that features the busy Logan Worldwide Airport are the Ted Williams Tunnel and two bridges that pop vehicles over into neighboring Chelsea, from which drivers can seize the Tobin Bridge or circle round via Everett and Charlestown. There’s additionally the Blue Line MBTA subway that takes a special — and typically individually troubled — tunnel into downtown.

These different egresses by vehicle glowed numerous shades of pink on Google maps, with the Ted Williams transferring at a crawl, Meridian Avenue main as much as the typically iffy Andrew McArdle Bridge all chock-a-block and the realm across the Chelsea Avenue bridge a maze of stopped vehicles. A digital site visitors signal taunted the road of drivers at the beginning of the closure, studying “Use Each Lanes for Sumner Tunnel” to a slow-moving backup of drivers being diverted off the freeway and up Meridian.

“I suppose nobody ought to get a coronary heart assault over the weekend,” state Sen. Lydia Edwards fumed wryly to the Herald on Saturday.

She mentioned her essential issues are entry to hospitals and emergency medical responses in Eastie.

“I nonetheless don’t perceive their emergency precautions,” Edwards, who lives just some blocks from the Eastie-side tunnel mouth, mentioned of MassDOT.

The state company didn’t reply to a request Saturday for the way it thought the closure was going.

Edwards was certainly one of seven signatories to a letter to MassDOT this week that requested additional steps be taken. She, Mayor Michelle Wu, Council President Ed Flynn, Eastie Metropolis Councilor Gigi Coletta and Eastie state Rep. Adrian Madaro, plus and Revere pols Mayor Brian Arrigo and state Reps. Jeff Turco and Jessica Giannino all referred to as for the Blue Line to be made free, the T to deliver again the ferry to downtown — which it ran free of charge throughout a current prolonged Blue Line closure — and taking extra steps to higher talk what’s occurring and what to do about it.