The Scajaquada Expressway, also known as Route 198, was planned in the 1950s and built in the mid-1960s with federal money to link interstates 90 and 190. But, like many of the urban renewal projects of that time, the road came with a steep price: segmented communities, ravaged creek shorelines and destroyed parkland.

Today, only about one-third of the vehicles travel from one end of the expressway to the other, according to the DOT.

In response to community concerns over safety, the DOT produced a plan for the Scajaquada Corridor in 2005 known as the Expanded Project Proposal. The preferred design, which received widespread community support, reduced the speed limit to 30 mph, improved the aesthetic of the road and incorporated crosswalks, roundabouts, narrower travel lanes, sidewalks and bicycle lanes.

But the DOT’s traffic engineers added new requirements that would maintain the expressway as a principal urban artery at the same level of vehicular use, which doomed the plan. The consultant who put the plan together wasn’t renewed. Many of those features proposed 11 years ago, and still favored by a large number of the community, are not in the current plan.