Massachusetts Route 128

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Route 128
Yankee Division Highway
Route 128 highlighted in red
Route information
Maintained by MassDOT
Length	57.5829 mi[1] (92.6707 km)
Existed	1927–present
Major junctions
South end	I-93 / I-95 / US 1 in Canton
Major intersections	I-90 / Mass Pike / Route 30 in Weston US 20 in Waltham Route 2 in Lexington US 3 in Burlington I-93 in Reading US 1 in Lynnfield I-95 in Peabody
North end	Route 127A in Gloucester
Location
Country	United States
State	Massachusetts
Counties	Norfolk Middlesex Essex
Highway system
Massachusetts State Highway System Interstate US State
← Route 127A → Route 128A

Route 128, known as the Yankee Division Highway, is an expressway in the U.S. state of Massachusetts maintained by the Highway Division of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT). Spanning 57 miles (92 km), it is one of two beltways (the other being Interstate 495) around Boston, and is known as the "inner" beltway, especially around areas where it is 15 miles (25 km) or less outside of Boston. The route's current southern terminus is at the junction of I-95 and I-93 in Canton, and it is concurrent with I-95 around Boston for 37.5 miles (60.4 km) before it leaves the interstate and continues on its own in a northeasterly direction towards Cape Ann. The northern terminus lies in Gloucester a few hundred feet from the Atlantic Ocean. All but the northernmost 3 miles are a freeway, with the remainder being an expressway. Its concurrency with I-95 makes up most of its length.

Originally designated in 1927 along a series of surface streets, Route 128 provided a circumferential route around the city of Boston. The original route extended from the seaport of Gloucester, on the North Shore, to the beach resort community of Hull on the South Shore. Construction of the present circumferential highway began in Gloucester in the early 1950s and progressed southward, in part on new alignments and in part by the improvement of older roads, and came to completion with the final link into the Southeast Expressway (Massachusetts Route 3/John Fitzgerald Expressway/Pilgrim Highway) at a three-way flying junction known as the Braintree Split. With the completion of the final segment of the Yankee Division Highway in Braintree in 1960, the segment of Route 128 through Braintree, Weymouth and Hingham was rerouted to run concurrently with Route 3 on the Southeast Expressway/Pilgrim Highway between the Braintree Split (Route 3 Exit 42 (old exit 19), Route 128 exit 67) and Exit 35 (old exit 14), then along Pond Street in Norwell to Queen Anne's Corner on the Hingham-Norwell line, retaining its original route from Queen Anne's corner to its terminus in Hull. Subsequent upgrades on the northern segment in the 1960s completed a full freeway from Braintree in the south to Gloucester in the north.

Over time, the southern terminus was truncated twice.

• Circa 1965, a policy of limiting each road to one route number led to a decision to drop the designation of Route 128 from the Southeast Expressway and to redesignate the orphaned segment from Exit 35 (old exit 14) of the Southeast Expressway to the terminus in Hull as Route 228 - but with its designated directions reversed to reflect the actual geographical direction of the new route. This shifted the southern terminus of Route 128 to the Braintree Split.^{[citation needed]}
• Circa 1997, the same policy led to removal of the designation of Route 128 from the segment of the Yankee Division Highway between the Braintree Split and the junction with the southern segment of I-95 in Canton, which had been designated as I-93. (This plan also would have removed the designation of Route 128 from the segment between the junction with the southern segment of I-95 in Canton and the junction with the northern segment of I-95 in Peabody; however, this was rescinded because it would have orphaned the Route 128 railroad station, on the border of Westwood and Dedham, and adjacent to the portion of the highway just to the northwest of the Canton interchange.) However, that segment retains the "Yankee Division Highway" name.^{[citation needed]}

However, twenty years later, the entire segment of the highway is still called "Route 128" even in traffic reports on radio and television in local parlance, often causing considerable confusion for uninitiated visitors to the area.

In local culture, "Route 128" is generally recognized as the demarcation between the more-urban inner suburbs and the less-densely-developed suburbs surrounding the city of Boston. It also approximately delimits the region served by the rapid transit and trolley system operated by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA),^[a] and is used to reference the high-technology industry that developed from the 1960s to the 1980s in the suburban areas along the highway.^[2]

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