The scientists tracked anonymized information from more than 680,000 Boston-area drivers over three weeks. The engineers used commuters’ cellphone signals to locate the position of individual drivers. The study identifies the origin or “home” districts of the drivers according to the hours and locations of the calls. For the purposes of the study, a trip is occurring when the same mobile phone user is observed in two distinct zones within one hour.
What’s true at a single intersection turns out to apply on a larger scale: It’s just a few drivers, relatively speaking, who jam things up for the rest of us.
Comments
Restrict the residents of those towns from using their cars during rush hour. Govenor Patrick can declare a state of emergency and those in violation will be subject to one year in jail.
Why is that possibly the solution -- to reduce demand for driving by certain drivers? Why not instead improve the roads, traffic flow, etc. so that everyone (that can afford it) can drive to work in a reasonable time (not more than 1.5 minutes per mile).
More roads? That's just more incentive to drive. Much better to get more public transportation into those areas.
They ignored the idiot factor...the Boston area has a higher concentration of stupid people who somehow manage to get licensed to drive. You all know them...they drive slow in the fast lane or they drive in the middle of two lanes or they race through yellow/red lights just in time to slam on their brakes and block the intersection. If Medford put cameras up at Wellington Circle and fined everyone who drives through red lights, they could cut taxes and still balance the city budget AND improve traffic flow during rush hours.
I live next to santilli circle, and I'll tell you , I'm on the same page as you my friend. Wellington Circle is a disaster. Can it be fixed? Who knows. You have to admit that it is difficult to navigate for people not from the area, as are all other rotaries. What are the staties doing in that barrack at the rotary?
FIX THE BRIDGE IN EVERETT... PROBLEM SOLVED.
When snotty towns like Acton are allowed to refuse a free garage at the South Acton commuter rail station, where half of the spots are reserved for Acton residents, and when the commuter rail schedule has huge holes in it when no trains run, and when commuter rail equipment is so old that it has become unreliable, this is what happens. Add to that the belief that trains must run on what they bring in, which ignores the vast subsidies that go to roads (Chapter 90 federal funds, state tax dollars, local tax dollars, oil companies) and you have the recipe for today's problems.
Sometimes the Globe is critical of suburban sprawl. Now they criticize the high-density cities like Marlborough, Lowell and Framingham for causing traffic congestion? Which is it Globe: Do you like the suburbs or don't you? Are they good or bad for the region? Do you propose that every suburban town and city should limit its density like Dover to minimum lot sizes of 2 acres--because with that density you'll never have enough vehicles to cause traffic congestion? Where's professor Glaeser on this?
I don't see any "criticism" here. It looks like the point of the article is that we can get more bang for our transportation buck by focusing our road improvement efforts in a number of census tracts.
My own experience is limited to Waltham, where Main Street is poorly designed for the load of traffic it now has to carry. It probably worked great when the town was smaller, but there are a number of twists and turns (sometimes the left lane is left-turn-only, sometimes the right lane is right-turn-only, so thru traffic has to shift back and forth), no reflectors, and poor road striping. By studying the structure of Main Street, and its intersections, and improving mass transit options (hello, convenient but neglected 70 bus!), congestion throughout the area would be improved.
The handwriting is surely on the wall.We need to invest much more in Public Transit.A huge chunk of debt from the Big Dig cost overuns was thrown onto the MBTA.This is clearly shortsighted and greedy for some but not helpful to the state. The wider the roads the more the traffic.Expressway roads in the Boston area have been widened and made more circuitous,supposedly to relieve congestion but.....It is not a city vs suburb problem as the article points out.It's in the interests of all across the state to have good quality,expanded public transit. We are the only developed country that does not havehigh quality public transit for ouselves and visitors.It is an embarassment.People come to see this cradle of liberty and find neglect,obsolescence and callousness,Boston is a small city,yet even within the hub,there hasn't been the will to make it happen. Over dependance on cars is choking family and individual budgets as well as air quality. I hope that Gov Patrick's new plan will yield some actual transport benefits for citizens of MA rather than more of the same twisted priorities.
I'll tell you this..I get stuck in billerica every morning from 30-45 minutes and then another hour to hour/15 minutes between Woburn and Boston. Commission whatever kind of study you want, just make it stop. Or please speak to my employer and allow me to work from home every day.
Root cause of traffic is drivers feel a need to control their schedule with flexibility and freedom of movement. Too many people are too impatient for today's mass transit schedules. Work to eliminate that belief system and a lot of drivers will move towards public transit options. MIT should expand the study to include bus and rail capacity. How many empty seats per bus? Decrease the size of some buses, using smaller more mobile & efficient vehicles while increasing their frequency through any given area. Put GPS on each one. Commuters can download an app to see where micro buses are in real time and where the stops are. Make it interactive with the driver, with options to pull over between stops as the app finds a commuter mid stop. People would realize they can plan their day by bus just as easily as by their own car for daily, repetitive tasks like getting to and from work and going to the market. I'd rather see lots of mostly full micro buses carying 10 commuters driving around than 10 cars in a logjam with one person per vehicle. It will only happen if people don't have to wait at a curb more than a few minutes, ever, meaning they have not given up their freedom of movement and choice. Don't forget, our attention spans are pretty limited these days, so if we have to wait longer than a few minutes, we might forget where we are going, and why.
It's interesting that Wynn Resorts wants to build a casino in Everett, one of the few areas that is called out here as causing the most traffic jams. Can't wait to see the additional problems that would create.
How sure are we that solving "this problem" would not just move the jams down to the next tight spot in the road?