Source: Union-News (Springfield, MA)
Author: MARLA A. GOLDBERG
GOSHEN, MA – It may never happen. That was what officials from District 1 of the Massachusetts Highway Department told town administrators yesterday about possibly relocating part of Route 9.
But nonetheless, Edwin Taginski, a project development engineer, and Rudyard Longton, acting director of District 1, questioned selectmen and members of the planning and conservation boards, as well as the fire chief and police chief, on what ought to be done with Route 9 in the area of Williamsburg and neighboring Goshen.
“Route 9 is a principal road – it’s narrow, it’s windy, it’s hazardous,” Taginski told the group of about 15 people. “We are responsible for the safety of the traveling public on that highway.”
Taginski and Longton warned town officials that their department may never relocate Route 9 in Williamsburg or Goshen, and may simply improve it instead. But they asked to hear how people felt about relocation anyway. “Some day maybe the question will be serious . . . but right now it’s an exploration,” Taginski said.
The meeting, which earlier included state Sen. Stanley Rosenberg, D-Amherst, was arranged to facilitate several bridge and road projects here involving the state highway department.
Town officials said they were concerned about the safety of Route 9 in Williamsburg and Goshen, particularly a curvy area near the town line, which Police Chief Ernest A. Hendricks said has been the site of numerous accidents. From the top of the hill called Goshen Mountain, Hendricks said, one can look down, imagine a car on an icy road and “see the trees marked up like tombstones where people have been killed.”
Goshen officials also have said they want to see the road made safer.
But the group yesterday said they wondered where the road could go and re-attach with the existing Route 9 corridor, and pondered the impact relocation might have on local businesses.
Conservation Commission Chairman David Haskell said plans existed in the 1950s for relocating Route 9 from Goshen to Amherst, cutting through Goshen’s Daughters of the American Revolution State Forest, Conway and Whately, and heading eastward (across the Connecticut River) to Amherst. The plans would have put Route 9 along a more northerly path than it goes today.