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(詳細はMassachusetts Turnpike in the 1960s. The highway began construction in 1955, following a southern path eastwards toward Boston from very near the New York border, where the new road intersected with Massachusetts Route 102 in West Stockbridge, Massachusetts, through Springfield and Worcester and terminating at Route 128 in Weston at the time of its completion in mid-May 1957. In 1960, it was proposed that the highway be extended into Boston. This proposal was highly controversial because of disputes among landholders, politicians and engineers over the alignment of the proposed Boston Extension. With the economic future of the city on the line, there was enormous pressure from many parties to have the roadway completed. == Historical overview == As Boston’s place as a center of commerce and manufacturing began to grow in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the need to move goods to the city's ports from growing mills and factories in communities such as Worcester, Lowell and Providence, Rhode Island, to warehouses in the city required investments in new methods of transportation. The growth of shipbuilding in the city also required the importation of raw materials from the interior regions. Additionally the newly expanded marketplaces within the city, such as Faneuil Hall, needed ways to bring their products to market. In response to these needs, the city and Commonwealth began a process of expanding transportation access to the city. New infrastructure such as bridges, wharves and ferries were established, often by early public-private corporations chartered by the Commonwealth.〔.〕〔.〕 The rudimentary system of roads that existed in the region at the time was woefully insufficient for the needs of the merchants, being in need of major overhauls and upgrades that were beyond the financial means of the Commonwealth and municipal governments of the time. The poor quality of the early roadways in the state, as well as others in the young nation, would often make the transportation of goods inland from the ports would often make it economically impractical to transport them via road.〔 While the military necessity of transporting men and supplies during the revolution helped improve some of the early highways in the states, many of these were not maintained or upgraded after the war’s end. Many roadways lacked bridges and adequate facilities to feed and house travelers on trips that would often take anywhere from a few days to a week to complete. Many communities were also hesitant or unable to provide sufficient capital required to establish or maintain amenities for those who passed through their towns.〔.〕 On March 16, 1805, the Massachusetts legislature chartered a system of private roads, or turnpikes, in designed to help facilitate travel and commerce into general laws of the Commonwealth. These turnpikes, named after the system of tollgates used to collect fares from travelers, were based upon a franchises-like system of private operators who would build, maintain and operate the roads using the toll revenue. The turnpikes often operated at a loss and many folded shortly after their opening.〔.〕 One such turnpike was designed to run from Roxbury to Worcester and was chartered as the Worcester Turnpike Corporation on March 7, 1806. The Worcester Turnpike was designed to be the primary roadways on the western approach to Boston and utilized a part of the old Connecticut Path along Tremont and Huntington streets, into Brookline and continued west to Worcester along roughly the same route as the modern Route 9. However, the costs of maintaining the road began to spiral as needed bridges in Shrewsbury began deteriorate and mandated requirements in its charter to run and maintain older and unaffiliated roadways along the route made it difficult for the Corporation to maintain profitability. Like many of its contemporary turnpikes, the Worcester Turnpike eventually succumbed to failure in 1841, had its charter dissolved by the Commonwealth, and the roadway was portioned and control transferred to local municipalities.〔.〕 alt="Figure 2 - Map of the various railways entering the city in 1853, The Boston and Albany Railroad is unnamed in this image, but is the line coming in from the lower left corner parallel to the bottom of the image. One of the primary contributors to the demise of the Worcester Turnpike was the ascendancy of the railroad during the 1830s.〔.〕 Chartered in 1831 by the General Court, the Boston and Worcester Railroad began construction of its line in 1832, and the mainline was completed in July 1835. The newly completed railroad initially utilized the right of way along another failed turnpike, the Central Turnpike, which ran from Boston to Worcester though Brookline, Wellesley, Natick, Framingham and other communities along what is now the Framingham/Worcester MBTA commuter rail line. As illustrated in fig. 1, the railway originally ran through the tidal flats of the Back Bay and its impact on the city was only felt along the southern sections of the city. While originally designed as a long haul railway, the proprietors of the B&W, and other railways, eventually found that there was a willing market for commuter services along the routes and by 1845 had established a series of commuter rail facilities along its route.〔.〕 Through a series of mergers during the next several decades, the Boston and Worcester Railroad eventually evolved into the Boston and Albany Railroad in 1870, Connecting the capitols of Massachusetts and New York state.〔Harvard University Library〕 As the city slowly began filling in the Back Bay tidal estuary to establish the South End and Back Bay sections of the city, the rail line went from being a lone causeway in the middle of said tidal estuary to a major transportation cut through the heart of the western sections of the city.(See Fig. 2) Besides being a physical separator, the railroad was also a societal and economic barrier as well; while the South End reclamation project was a municipal project that lacked any form of solid planning, the Back Bay reclamation project was a state-run program that established specific ideas of who would reside within the district. The proximity of the railway also led to an unforeseen effect, suburban flight. With the new rail lines in close proximity to the entire city, many wealthier citizens began migrating to the cities and towns west of Boston. This migration put financial burdens for municipal services such as water and sewer, fire and police on these communities, and help led to drives for them to be annexed by Boston, further expanding the city limits.〔.〕 Despite these issues, by the end of the nineteenth century the western railroad and its contemporaries were helping drive the city’s economy by assisting local industries to bring products to Boston’s port, helping it become the second busiest port on the eastern seaboard.〔.〕 To help accommodate the growth in rail traffic, the Boston and Albany constructed two large rail yards, one in the Allston section of city and another adjacent to the Lennox Hotel on Huntington St, adjacent to the Back Bay.(See Fig. 3) While the Boston and Albany and its contemporaries railroad was constructing new yards, other factors that would foreshadow the decline of the city’s fortunes were manifesting themselves through the late nineteenth century and into the early; traffic to the Port of Boston declined, necessitating the Federal government to dredge the main shipping channels and construct new piers to handle larger vessels; AT&T moved its operations and headquarters from Boston to New York in 1910. The problematic relationship between the city and the business sector under the successive mayoral administrations of James Michael Curley drove a wedge between these businesses and the municipal government, souring employers on Boston. Adding to these problems, a series of economic recessionary periods culminating with the Great Depression coupled with heavy tax burden placed the city’s finances into a tailspin. Despite minor uplifts from the mobilization of the two World Wars, by the end of the World War II the city was in dire straits.〔.〕 Much of the state’s infrastructure west of Boston was in a serious state of decay, with the major east-west routes 2 and 9 in need of significant upgrades. At the same time, rail traffic in the region was becoming financially untenable to utilize for material transportation for newly emerging technology companies of the era due to the rail roads’ outmoded pricing structures and limited geographical reach.〔.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「History of the Massachusetts Turnpike」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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