Wham, Bam, Thank You MassDOT: Night Work Shakes Beverly

BEVERLY, MA -- Drivers know to thank the highway workers who pull third shifts to rebuild and resurface highways in the overnight hours so they don't have to sit in traffic jams during daylight hours. But those guys are, after all, getting paid. No one ever thanks the residents who live near those road projects that stay up all night listening to the bumping, grinding and pounding of heavy machinery.

There are quite a few of those people in Beverly this morning and will be for most mornings in the coming weeks. The Massachusetts Department of Transportation began overnight work on Route 1A and Dodge Street Monday night, a densely populated stretch of highway.

Work is being done between 8 pm and 5 am, Sunday through Thursday and is expected to continue through May 23. MassDOT promises the work will improve safety, traffic flow, and roadway drainage -- and that's a good thing. But in the short-term, the only thing that might be noisier than the actual roadwork are the complaints about the roadwork on social media.

"This is an absurd assault on my neighborhood that has been going on for hours. Figure out a different way to do this, please," one woman posted on a forum for Beverly residents at 2:30 am Tuesday. By the time most people were waking up, her post had received more than 20 responses, ranging from commiseration to condemnation.

"No matter what, people would complain. Thank goodness they did this at night. The traffic would otherwise be atrocious," one of the tamer responses noted.

Social media venting or not, the project is going to move forward and for the next few weeks there will be a different kind of haves vs. have nots divide in Beverly: those who have sleep and those who have not slept. The good news is that there are only 12 more scheduled work nights....weather permitting, of course.

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Patch file photo.

Dave Copeland can be reached at dave.copeland@patch.com or by calling 617-433-7851. Follow him on Twitter (@CopeWrites) and Facebook (/copewrites).