Worcester seeks to limit traffic around CSX rail yard
Grant Welker
The CSX freight rail yard is causing friction with city leaders who say street traffic to and from the facility is hurting quality of life for nearby residents.
The Worcester City Council on Tuesday told municipal officials to find ways cut down on the tractor-trailer traffic going around the CSX freight rail yard, which completed a $100-million expansion.
The council floated ideas such as making certain streets one way, limiting vehicle weight or changing speed limits on certain roads, or re-configuring the entrance to the rail yard, with the goal of cutting down on the number of tractor trailers from the rail yard driving down largely residential streets.
The city administration will review the traffic pattern around Grafton, Hamilton and Plantation streets, which run south of the 51-acre rail yard.
CSX spent about $100 million-plus expanding the yard, which generally sits between Shrewsbury and Franklin streets on the east side of the city. The expansion was part of CSX's shift of operations from Allston to Westborough and Worcester, bringing intermodal container operations and a related increase in jobs.
City Councilor George Russell, who represents the southeast corner of the city, said residents along Lake Avenue and Sunderland Road have been especially impacted by an increase in tractor trailer traffic. Rail lines travel roughly parallel to Lake Avenue going to and from Worcester and Boston.
"They have trains in their backyards and tractor trailers in their front yards," he said. "Believe me, they're sick to death of it."
Rob Doolittle, a spokesman for CSX, said the company has taken steps to encourage drivers that carry freight in and out of the terminal to make only right turns, or toward Interstate 290. Those drivers do not work for CSX, he said.
CSX has held briefings with drivers and supervisors about the importance of using recommended routes, has placed signs in the terminal advising that no left turns on to Grafton Street are allowed, and has placed a barrier at the exit of the terminal to make left turns more difficult.
"CSX understands that our operations sometimes have an impact on the communities where we operate, and we work to limit those impacts to the extent possible," Doolittle said.
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