Massachusetts Highway Department

Massachusetts Highway Department
Department overview
Formed1991; 33 years ago (1991)
Preceding agencies
  • Massachusetts Highway Commission (1893–1919)
  • Massachusetts Department of Public Works (1919–1991)
DissolvedOctober 31, 2009; 15 years ago (2009-10-31)
Superseding department
JurisdictionMassachusetts
Employees1,850[1]
WebsiteOfficial website

The Massachusetts Highway Department (abbreviated MassHighway) was the highway department in the U.S. state of Massachusetts from 1991 until the formation of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) in 2009.[2]

The responsibilities of MassHighway included the design, construction and maintenance of all state highways and bridges and signage of numbered routes. During that time it was a part of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Transportation (EOT), which was also reorganized into the Department of Transportation. As part of the reorganization, the separate Massachusetts Turnpike Authority was dissolved and its duties assumed by the MassDOT highway division.[2]

The department was split into five district offices managed by a District Highway Director (DHD) under the supervision of the Chief Engineer at MassHighway headquarters in Boston. This district plan has been continued under MassDOT and the Boston area (westward along the Mass Turnpike to Weston and south through to Randolph) was the basis for a sixth district in 2010.[3]

The Massachusetts Highway Department conducts an annual traffic data collection program. A traffic counting program is conducted each year by the Statewide Traffic Data Collection section of the Massachusetts Highway Department. This data is available online by autoroute and city/town list or as an interactive map. The 2009 program involved the systematic collection of traffic data utilizing automatic traffic recorders located on various roadways throughout the state.[4]

  1. ^ "About". Mhd.state.ma.us. Archived from the original on 2015-06-14. Retrieved 2015-06-12.
  2. ^ a b "Welcome to MassDOT - About US". Commonwealth of Massachusetts. 2009. Retrieved 2009-11-05.
  3. ^ http://www.mhd.state.ma.us/default.asp?pgid=dist/distRoot&sid=wrapper&iid=dist/dist.asp Archived 2009-04-01 at the Wayback Machine About the Districts retrieved 3 April 2009
  4. ^ "Traffic Volume Counts". www.mhd.state.ma.us. Archived from the original on 2011-04-24.