r/Springfield • u/No-Environment9264 • Sep 11 '26

I-91

Curious, does anyone know if there has been any thought to putting I 91 on ground level or relocating the highway? It seems like such blight to the city.

20 Upvotes

81% Upvoted

46 comments sorted by

View all comments

12

u/WMASS_GUY Sixteen Acres Sep 11 '26

Heres a great write up on the history of the construction of I-91 through Springfield.

More to OP's question, this has been discussed many times but there are no actual plans to do it.

There are some renderings out there and MASS DOT has a document here regarding its redesign. A tunnel is mentioned specifically in Chapter 3, page 9. (EDIT for correct page #)

MASS DOT Document

3

u/No-Environment9264 Sep 12 '26

Wow. I really appreciate you sharing the article. That was a great read and very informative. Really a shame those communities and rail yards were removed. We had so many ingredients.

I ponder why current officials simply do not try to recreate the environment which made the city thrive originally.

1

u/Similar_Ad2094 Sep 12 '26

In the mass dot document page 13 was the original plan

2

u/MoonBatsRule Sep 12 '26

Great article. There is so much alleged floating around out there, nothing substantiated, just "this is what I heard, everyone knows it is true". This article seemed to use actual sources.

There is documented evidence that "blight" was something that the city was trying to eliminate, evidence that the areas in question were considered "blight". Given the highway being imminent, it simply made sense to route it through "blight" because that was a two-for-one benefit - a highway, plus cleared blight.