1923 Planning Board Report-Vicinity of High Bridge

The complicated and dangerous arrangement of roadways, railway tracks for electric and steam cars, in combination with a narrow underpass in the High Bridge district illustrates forcibly the costly results of allowing important road junctions to “happen by chance.” It is true that these junctions were created at a time when traffic in this neighborhood was light and when the principles of road junction design were little understood. It is singularly unfortunate that this bad piece of planning should be spread out before the eyes of all visitors approaching Norwood, and at a point where the hazards of travel are at their worst. The Planning Board has made surveys to scale of conditions as they exist near the bridge today, and on the basis of these surveys the Board has prepared a plan which redesigns the present road junctions to secure greater convenience for the operation of vehicles and at the same time to reduce danger to the smallest possible terms. The accompanying plan shows the general out line of these changes, which include the elimination of the oblique approach to the present bridge by preventing vehicular traffic from following the line of the trolley which brings vehicles into a zone of obscuration. The plan also arranges a cross-cut from the bridge to Prospect Street which separates travel in this direction from Washington Street diagonals. The curve at the junction of Washington and Prospect Streets is made more ample for motors proceeding in a southerly direction. Accommodation is also made for the development of the land between Washington Street and Prospect Street by an extension of Fulton Street. This plan can be carried out with relatively small changes in property lines, as it depends largely on the rectification of the lines of traveled way. The photograph above indicates present conditions and shows the steep gradients of Washington Street, which reach a maximum opposite High Bridge where vehicles moving in both directions attempt to secure high speed at a point of unusual danger.