The Mass Pike in Framingham was back open Saturday morning after crews repaired a trench that developed near the I-495 interchange, with an investigation into what happened now underway.
The highway was shut down for emergency repairs when the issue first developed near an existing construction site on Friday morning. It started around 7 a.m. when crews noticed the road cracking. About 400 feet of road started to buckle and there were concerns that a "major sinkhole" could develop.
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The westbound lanes were shut down so the Massachusetts Department of Transportation could dig up the highway to stabilize the road and fill the void that formed. By 4:30 p.m. a lane had reopened and the rest of the highway was open Friday night.
“We’re in what's an old swamp. This is the Great Cedar swamp, there’s a lot of unstable soil in swamps, we’ll see exactly what happened, we think unstable soil may have been loosened by that activity," explained Jonathan Gulliver, MassDOT highway administrator.
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This is the second significant safety issue on the highway in a week - last Friday, concrete fell from the ceiling of the Prudential Tunnel on the Boston stretch of the Pike, narrowly missing vehicles. And while traffic is flowing again, drivers say they have bigger concerns than the delays.
"Everything sucks, Massachusetts makes us keep up with our inspection sticker, keep up with our cars, maintenance and roads sucks everything is horrible," complained Edson Marniho, who lives in Framingham.
"If you don’t have a sense of security and safety on the road, then you're not going to want to drive on them if that’s happening often you're going to be concerned about it of course," said Mazen Vatim of Southborough.
The Massachusetts Department of Transportation inspected the tunnel system after the falling concrete incident and stressed that the Pru Tunnel is safe. Overhead shielding was installed in some areas as a precaution.
The original construction in Framingham has been paused so officials can further investigate what happened to cause the damage there.
