All lanes have reopened after the Massachusetts Turnpike was closed at Interstate 495 after part of the roadway started to crack.
The Massachusetts Turnpike has fully reopened after the westbound lanes were closed for emergency repairs at the interchange with Interstate 495 Friday morning because of road settling amid construction that could have created a large sinkhole, officials said.
There was a "risk of a major sinkhole opening up," Jonathan Gulliver, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation's highway administrator, said in a news conference Friday afternoon.
The closures lasted hours before MassDOT announced shortly after 9 p.m. that all travel lanes had reopened.
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He was hoping to have one lane of the westbound side of the highway reopened by about 2 p.m., but all lanes remained closed until about 4:30 p.m., when cars started traveling through the area on one lane.
For people headed west in Massachusetts on Friday evening, Gulliver said, "if you have another area that you can reroute to … choose that area."
The incident took place in the Framingham/Westborough/Hopkinton area. Officials initially said a trench developed in the right lane of I-90 near a construction area. Traffic was being detoured off the Pike onto Route 9 at exit 111.
The incident comes a week after a chunk of concrete fell on the roadway in a tunnel through the Pike in Boston.
