Traffic Backups Prompt 'Fine Tune' for Traffic Signals

Commuters coming in to Beverly from Route 128 often encounter a large traffic backup at exit 22.

State transportation officials are taking notice.

This week, state Department of Transportation officials began “fine tuning” the signal timing of the traffic lights along Elliott Street (Route 62) near Route 128 in Danvers.

While the recently reconstructed interchange is in Danvers, it forms an important link from the highway to downtown Beverly and the Cummings Center.

“It has been brought to our attention that traffic congestion on the northbound offramp has been building up in the morning peak hours,” said MassDOT spokesman Michael Verseckes. “The efforts to fine tune the signaling are being done such that the timing will address the congestion building up and will not “penalize” traffic either heading or turning in another direction.”

The $23 million project to reconstruct the intersection was completed in summer 2012. Over a year later, a study found that the number of car crashes in a certain section of the intersection actually increased after the new traffic signals and rebuilt remap were completed.

The December 2013 study from Danvers Police Public Safety Analyst Sarah Slavin found that 56 accidents occurred between January and July 2013 at the on-ramp to Route 128 North from Elliott Street - an 84 percent increase over the average number of accidents there the previous two years during the same period.

Shortly after the project was completed two years ago, the new ramps and traffic lights elicited complaints from unhappy drivers, who sounded off in the comments section of Patch.

Verseckes said the latest work on the traffic lights is “a balancing act that is still ongoing.” There will be “subsequent adjustments and continued monitoring to ensure we optimize the timing and alleviate the congestion we’ve seen,” Verseckes said.