Due to reconstruction, the Congress Street Bridge over the Ft. Point Channel will be closed beginning on Monday, April 2 for about 4 months.

Traffic Changes:

 - Sleeper Street - Between Seaport Boulevard and Congress Street, will be one-way southbound

 - Congress Street - Between Sleeper Street and A Street, will be one-way eastbound.

 - Traffic will be detoured using Seaport Boulevard and Summer Street

 - Detour routes will be posted.

Sirius has announced a deal with Chrysler to provide satellite television in vehicles. The service, called SIRIUS Backseat TV will be available in some 2008 Chrysler models.

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/070329/clth046.html?.v=93

Since it is part of the back-seat entertainment system, which many vehicles already have in some form, I tend to think this would not be a driver distraction issue. At least not any more of a distraction than what is already in vehicles.

That’s my “transportation opinion”.

My "parental opinion", as the father of a 4-year old, is that kids watch way too much TV as it is. Turn it off and play a driving game, or talk with them instead.

Here’s a question that I don’t have an answer for…

Why is it that the Monday afternoon and Friday morning rush hours are almost always the lightest of the work week?

This has been the general trend in Boston for at least the last 15 years (which is how long I have experience as a traffic reporter in Boston). We’ve discussed this in our Operations Center for a long time and have never come up with what I think is a definitive answer.

If it’s very heavy on Monday morning, isn’t it logical that it would be just as heavy in the afternoon? But we rarely find a correlation between morning and afternoon volume.

Some people think that Monday afternoons are lighter because people work later on Mondays. That seems like a valid reason, but I’m not seeing people work any later on Mondays, at least not in this office.

And are people just lazier on Friday mornings? Are they sleeping later and missing the rush hour?

What’s your opinion?

The New York Times ran a story yesterday discussing the limitations and dangers of multitasking.

Slow Down, Brave Multitasker, and Don’t Read This in Traffic  

There have been a lot of discussions about the dangers of cell phones, radios, I-pods, computers and other distractions while driving. I almost got whacked on my way home last night by a woman who was deeply involved in a cell phone conversation.

On of the interesting asides in the article is that younger generations are not necessarily better multitaskers than us old folk.

The Registry of Motor Vehicles reports that new penalties will be in effect for Junior Operators starting this Saturday. Even first-time offenders will face substantial fines, license suspensions, and reinstatement costs under the new “zero tolerance” environment for speeding or unsafe driving by teens.

According to the Registry, teens who receive a speeding ticket will face the following:

• 90 day license suspension (includes notification to parent or guardian)
• $50 fine
• Completion of the State Courts Against Road Rage (SCARR) program
• Completion of an attitudinal retraining course
• If the junior operator is found to be driving 10 MPH over the speed limit, he or she will incur additional $10 fines for each MPH over the speed limit and an additional $50 surcharge

These new penalties will apply to violations of the passenger and night driving restrictions, speeding and negligent or reckless operation while holding a learner’s permit or Junior Operator’s License.

For more information, go to www.mass.gov/rmv and look for the “Teens and Parents” section.

What are your thoughts on the Junior Driving penalties?

Sorry for more postings about runners in the road.

We are three weeks out from the marathon now. For most runners, that means that this weekend will be the last big, long training run before the race. Many (and I mean MANY) runners will be out on the marathon course. If you are driving through Hopkinton, Ashland, Framingham, Natick, Wellesley, Newton, Brookline and Boston this weekend, please drive carefully. The runners (yes, mostly in the road) will number in the thousands.

On Wednesday I posted this question:

• In Massachusetts, which of the 12 months has the highest average traffic volume?

The answer is August.

According to the traffic count data provided on Mass Highway’s web site, August is the month with the highest vehicle counts hitting MHD”s sensors throughout the state.

This is the same pattern of usage for the SmarTraveler information service.   Busy in the summer, quiet in the winter.  

Yesterday I posted a blog entry about why runners run in the street during the winter.   My claim was that runners to this because many sidewalks are not shoveled.  

Later in the day, Jon posted a comment asking this question:

“I often see joggers on the streets at other times of year, when it's nice and warm and there isn't a hint of snow anywhere. What's the deal with that?"

It's a GREAT question, and I'm going to be honest here, I almost always run in the street.   From a drivers perspective this is crazy, and an almost indefensible action.   Especially when there is a perfectly good, clear, safe sidewalk, built for pedestrians just inches away.  I hear people complain about it all the time. I get grief from friends, neighbors, co-workers, strangers, and even my wife.

Let me attempt to explain, and then you can pummel me with your anger and derision.

1. Crash Safety – I know this is counter-intuitive to people who see us running in the street. But I have a greater fear of cars coming out of driveways, parking lots and side streets than I do of cars coming at me while I'm running facing traffic. I can see and react to cars coming at me. I can’t always see cars coming from the side, and those cars are certainly not looking for runners, they're watching out for other cars. Most of the problems I’m aware of with runners being hit have been from cars pulling out and hitting runners on the sidewalk who are less visible than they would be if they were in the road.
2. Softer Surface – Roads are softer than sidewalks. The material that roads are made of is slightly more forgiving on runners legs than the material that most sidewalks are made from. This may seem a minor point, but it becomes a big issue for marathoners and people who run upwards of 30 miles a week. Running on sidewalks takes more energy from the body, because we take more of a pounding.
3. Even and Consistent Surface – Sidewalks vary in their quality from block to block and corner to corner. Some are in fine shape and are good to run on, and then the next block is uneven, rutted, cracked or made with cobblestones. If you're running any significant distance, it becames very difficult if you are contantly having to concentrate on the sidewalk and having to weave in and out of traffic, depending on the condition.
4. People – If it’s a busy street, running on the sidewalk means weaving in and out of people and risking injury to other pedestrians who may not be expecting a running coming up behind them, or crossing paths.
5. Lighting – If it’s dark, it’s generally much easier to see the surface of the road than the surface of the sidewalk.

With all of that said, I still completely understand the frustration people experience with runners who run in the road.

I’m guilty, guilty, and guilty.

In Massachusetts, which of the 12 months has the most traffic volume? 

Answer by commenting to this post.

11:01 am - Clarification - Based on the comment from reader Aaron Read - The question is based on the average traffic volume extended through the entire month. 

Ever since I was a kid I've loved looking at maps. I could (and did) spend hours at a time looking over atlases from all over the world. The weather guys get excited about clouds, I get excited by anything published by Rand-McNally.

This link comes with a hat tip to adamg at:

http://www.universalhub.com.

Several years ago Normal Leventhal put out a fantastic book called Mapping Boston which remains my favorite coffee table book of all time. The Boston Public Library has started posting many of the maps from the Normal Levinthal Map Center on their web site.

It’s a great historical resource and will take up hours of my time when I should be “working”.

http://maps.bpl.org/tag/location:/

It’s dark and you’re driving along when suddenly you come upon a runner, barely visible jogging in the road. How annoying and dangerous is that? How can you be expected to see that person? Get on the sidewalk, you freak. Roads are for cars, not runners!!!

Horns are honked, fingers fly, and profanities are spewed.

Here’s the thing, I’m a runner, and I’m one of those stupid people in the road, your road. Much of the year the only time I can run is when it’s dark. It’s dark when I go to work, it’s dark when I come home. But I can’t stop running, just because it’s dark.   I'm a runner.

Right now, it’s less than 4 weeks to the Boston Marathon and I, along with several thousand others are trying to get ready for the big race. There are also untold others who run just for the sake of staying fit and in shape. In my 8 miles through Arlington and Winchester this morning I saw a couple dozen runners, all in the road, all in the darkness.

Why are we in the road when there’s a sidewalk right there? Well, today the reason is that not everyone shovels their sidewalk. If one person on your block doesn’t shovel, that makes that entire sidewalk unusable to us runners.  We can't weave in and out of driveways, up and down over snow piles.   We'd turn an ankle (or worse) if we tried to run on the rutted, unshoveled sidewalks.   So we’re in the road and we're very sorry.

We realize it’s dangerous. That’s why we wear reflective gear, and run as close to the edge as we can.

I’m just asking for some sympathy here, we’re not happy that so many people don’t shovel their sidewalks either.   It really does no good to honk, swear and wave that finger at us.   We've got to get in our miles.   We're runners. 

Yesterday, Jeff Larson and I were in his office and something on the TV caught our eye. We were watching our Expressway camera at Andrew Square from atop the Fortress Building. I know what you’re thinking – most people watch broadcast shows on TV. Jeff and I stare at traffic cameras. Actually, yesterday’s view from the Fortress camera proved as dramatic as some reality shows.

We saw a man walk across the northbound ramp to Southhampton Street, heading toward the Expressway. Apparently, this person’s target was the South Bay Mall area, which meant crossing eight lanes of traffic moving at highway speeds. This happens now and again, and I have no idea why. What’s even more vexing is that the Southhampton Street overpass is mere steps away and a safer, more logical choice than crossing the Expressway on foot.

For the next several minutes, we watched as he stood against the guardrail in the breakdown lane and seemingly waited for the right time to dart into highway traffic. There is no right time to dart into traffic, by the way. He stepped out, saw traffic coming too fast, ran back to the breakdown lane, and started the cycle over again. Every venture into the travel lane meant that drivers reacted by braking and swerving, doing their best not to hit him.

He managed to get across the Northbound Expressway and then stood in the left lane of the Southbound side, again biding his time for the right moment to charge across all lanes. Again, drivers braked at the sight of him.

The story ends well, remarkably. He made it safely across the Expressway, though I am certain his darting into traffic caused much anxiety and adverse reactions from drivers. Not only is crossing any highway extremely unsafe, but it could lead to accidents and serious or fatal injuries.

To the highway-crossing pedestrian and others like them, don’t do it. Walk around, take an overpass. No one’s life should be at stake for the sake of a quick errand. Darting into highway traffic defies logic and puts an unreasonable burden on drivers. No one wants to live with hitting a pedestrian when the entire situation could have been easily avoided.

It may not be as wildly hilarious as Ziggy, but finally there's a cartoon just for those of us who like to play in traffic.

http://www.bigfatwhale.com/archives/bfw_296.html

Thanks to http://universalhub.com/ for the hint.

I will be the guy on the recumbant bike in two or three years.  

The Flower Show, St. Patrick's Day Festivities and snow will make travel a bit of a challenge this weekend.  

All weekend long the Spring Flower Show at the Bayside Expo Center will have a big impact on I-93/Xway traffic, especially at Columbia Road and Morrissey Blvd.  Expect Delays and/or use the MBTA instead of driving. 

Then on Sunday morning two St. Patrick's Day events will add to the traffic woes, a road race and the parade. 

Traffic is expected to be busy in South Boston on Sunday 18 due to the St. Patrick's Day Parade. BTD Commissioner Thomas J. Tinlin is encouraging parade goers use the MBTA.

The parade starts at 1:00 PM. An estimated 20,000 participants will gather along Dorchester Avenue, between Gillette Park and Old Colony Avenue, and West Broadway, between Dorchester Avenue and A Street, before proceeding along the following route:

• West Broadway to
• East Broadway, right on
• P Street, right on
• East 4th Street, left on
• K Street, right on
• East 5th Street, left on
• G Street, right around
• Thomas Park, left on
• Telegraph Street, left on
• Dorchester Street, ending at
• Andrew Square.

No parking will be allowed on the parade route on Sunday and vehicles will be towed.

In addition to the parade, a road race will begin at 10:00 AM at the intersection of F Street and West Sixth Street. Five to seven hundred runners will proceed along the following route:

• West Sixth Street, to
• Dorchester Avenue, right on
• East Broadway, down to
• Farragut Statue, back to
• East Broadway, right to
• West Broadway, left to
• E Street, to
• #230 West Sixth Street - the South Boston Boys and Girls Club.

A public informational meeting on the potential redesign of the Cloverleaf in Woburn will be held on March 21.

The I-93/I-95 Interchange Transportation Study is being conducted by the Massachusetts Executive Office of Transportation, Office of Transportation Planning. The primary goals of this planning study are to examine and recommend ways to improve traffic flow and safety at the interchange while minimizing impacts in surrounding communities. This effort will conclude in 2007 and provide a base for detailed environmental studies required by federal and state regulations.

http://www.9395info.com/

Hopefully it will be the last of the year, but here comes a Friday afternoon rush hour snowstorm. That’s never good news. When you put together the always heavy Friday rush hour volume with a forecast of 6+ inches of snow, you know it’s likely to be a nasty ride.

Not being a weather forecaster, I can’t claim to know the timing of the storm. On the EyeOpener this morning JC was talking about this being a Friday night / Saturday morning event. That means it’s likely we will have only a small amount of snow, perhaps an inch or two, during the rush hour. If that’s the case, it will be a sloppy and slow ride, but certainly not impassible.

Here’s the difficulty with rush hour snow storms. Plows and road treatment trucks can only travel as fast as traffic allows. If traffic is jammed the plows will be jammed.   If the plows are moving 3 mph in a Friday rush hour backup, then they can't clear the roads, no matter how many plows are on the streets.

So expect a tough Friday afternoon rush.

Many places have banned cell phone usage while driving.  Now several states (Arizona, Connecticut and Washington) are considering legislation to ban the activity of text messaging while driving. 

http://www.stateline.org/live/details/story?contentId=188546

Route 495 was a major trouble spot this morning. Shortly after 6:15 AM, a person believed to be hitchhiking in the northbound lanes at Route 133 was struck by several cars and fatally injured. State Police closed the left and center lanes for around three hours while photo and reconstruction teams investigated the crash. Only the right lane was open for travel, and northbound delays stretched back six miles to Route 110 in Chelmsford.

Southbound travelers dealt with a seven mile curiosity delay that began around Mass. Avenue in Lawrence. Also, many of the onramps leading to Route 495 North and South were congested, and we had a few secondary crashes in the backups.

All lanes were open shortly after 9 AM and residual delays quickly cleared out.

The cause of this accident is under investigation.

Frankly, this came as a surprise to me.  Given the number of truck crashes we report on in our operations center, I would have expected Massachusetts to be placed elsewhere on this list. 

The Truck Safety Coalition has come out with a list of the safest states for truck fatalities.

In 2005 more than 5,200 peopel were killed and another 114,000 were injured in truck trashes in this country.  That according to the most recent available statistics. 

The states with the lowest crash death rates in 2005 were:

Rhode Island - 0.9

Massachusetts - .38

Connecticut - .48

Hawaii - .71

Alaska - .75

New York - .76

New Hampshire - .84

http://www.trucksafetycoalition.org/

WCVB reports that gas prices are up for the fifth week in a row. Follow this link to read the story:

http://www.thebostonchannel.com/money/11231482/detail.html

Gas prices might top $3 by the summer.

Now that we are reaching deeper into our pockets to fill our tanks, do you find yourself changing your driving habits at all to compensate? Do you drive fewer miles per week, walk more, and forego longer pleasure trips? Have you decided to take the MBTA to work more often?

Some people have traded in their cars for hybrid models. Others have swapped their eight cylinder vehicles for six or four cylinder models. Still others have traded in their vehicles that require premium fuel in favor of models that run on regular or mid-grade gasoline.

Have you made any changes in your commuting habits in response to rising gas prices?

Excluding the O’Neill and Williams Tunnels, can you name the structures that are built over Interstate Highways in Massachusetts?

Provide your answer in the comments section.

London has established a “congestion charge zone” in which drivers in Central London and some neighborhoods are tolled for driving at certain times. In Boston, some people have recently floated this as a possible way of reducing congestion here.

The linked article is to a BBC story showing preliminary numbers indicating a drop in traffic volume in the affected areas since the implementation of the plan.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/6423349.stm

I am both a traffic dork and a trivia junky.   I stumbled upon these bits of highway trivia today while surfing the Federal Highway web site.  

(Something about those last two sentances makes me feel I've taken a seriusly wrong turn somewhere in my life.) 

Oh well, maybe I'll start a Transportation Trivia section.

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/programadmin/interstate.cfm

Interstate	From To	Miles
Longest Interstate Routes:
I-90	Seattle, WA to Boston, MA	3,020.54 miles
I-80	San Francisco, CA to Teaneck, NJ	2,899.54 miles
I-40	Barstow, CA to Wilmington, NC	2,555.40 miles
Shortest (2-Digit) Interstate Routes:
I-97	Annapolis to Baltimore, MD	17.62 miles
I-99	Bedford to Bald Eagle, PA	53.00 miles*
I-73	Emery to Greensboro, NC	56.70 miles

Interstate	States	Number
Interstate Routes Which Traverse the Most States:
I-95	FL,GA,SC,NC,VA,DC,MD,DE,PA,NJ,NY,CT,RI,MA,NH,ME	16 States
I-90	WA,ID,MT,WY,SD,MN,WI,IL,IN,OH,PA,NY,MA	13 States
I-80	CA,NV,UT,WY,NE,IA,IL,IN,OH,PA,NJ	11 States

Daylight savings time, as you know, happens this weekend, three weeks early than in the past. Turn those clocks ahead. Certainly, this time change will have an affect on the morning and afternoon commutes. Mornings could experience more delays, afternoons less.

In the morning the sun will rise one hour later, which means you will be driving in the dark until around 7 AM or so. That puts sunrise at the peak of the morning rush, which could have a significant impact on increasing delays during the morning, especially as people tend to rise a bit later as well. The combination of the two means more people driving during the later part of the rush, at a time when the solar glare will have its greatest effect.

It’s generally better news for the afternoon commute. The sun will set after 6:40 PM, so drivers will have an extra hour of light for their ride home. Right now, before the time change, the solar glare issues are felt at the peak of the afternoon rush. After the time change, the impact will be lessened in that it will hit its peak when rush hour volume is on the decline. It will still cause delays, but will affect fewer people.

As always, keep your windshields clean, inside and out, and bring those sunglasses!

This morning's commute was relatively uneventful.  Solar glare slowed many south and eastbound routes, but the volume was not terribly heavy.   Generally, we tend to see a lot of breakdowns in extremely cold weather, though that was not the case today. 

It will be cold for most of this week, so rest assured, we are keeping our eye out for those breakdowns!

I recently had the chance to sit down and talk with Senator Steven Baddour (pictured below), the Democratic Chairman of the Joint Committee on Transportation. As you may have read in the past, I have an ongoing interest in improving how we drive in Massachusetts. We are world famous for being bad drivers; we’re aggressive, we flout the law, and we’re proud of it. No one seems able to put their finger on why, whether it’s cultural, educational, a law enforcement issue, something about the way our roads are built, or something else.

Even Senator Baddour has a hard time defining why we drive as badly as we do, but he doesn’t think the law is the problem. “You can’t legislate common sense”.

Baddour says “I think people in Massachusetts are in too much of a hurry. People need to take a deep breath and slow down.”

He also thinks that how we drive is affected because “we feel empowered…people are distracted by cell phones and navigation systems and everything, we act like the car is on auto pilot.”

The Senator has been focused recently on passing legislation to improve the skills of younger drivers. At the end of 2006 the Massachusetts legislature passed a bill mandating more training for teen drivers and newer, higher penalties for speeding and drag racing.

He is specifically focused on working to improve drivers’ education in Massachusetts. He says “Look at how we’re taught to drive in this state. Teenagers think Drivers’ Ed is a joke, and they treat it like one. I don’t think they get the message about how dangerous driving is. They feel that driving is a right of passage, it’s not.”

The new legislation is clearly a positive step toward improving the skills of new drivers. But what about improving how the rest of us drive?

Here Senator Baddour points to the SCARR (State Courts Against Road Rage) program which provides some additional education for drivers who have been cited for speeding, aggressive driving, or road rage incidents.

Baddour expressed a general frustration with the way we drive in Massachusetts, but didn’t feel there is a single action that can be taken to solve the problem. “Police don’t enforce the laws as well as they could, it’s culturally accepted. I think we should encourage parental involvement.”

This links to a story here on thebostonchannel.com that is generating a lot of discussion. 

Story:

http://www.thebostonchannel.com/politics/11172333/detail.html

Discussion:

http://forums.ibsys.com/viewmessages.cfm?sitekey=bos&Forum=6&Topic=15454

The Harvard Crimson has been discussing the idea of putting Soldiers Field Road underground between Western Ave and North Harvard Street.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=517478

There was a story in the news recently regarding problems with Fast Lane billing.

Now this story that shows that the problem is not limited to Massachusetts;

http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/16/1628.asp

The commute was very problematic north and west of Boston this morning.  Routes 495, 95, 93, 3 and 2 saw many spinouts, accidents and rollovers. The most serious incident shut down Route 495 North at Route 111 in Boxboro for around 90 minutes after a tandem tractor trailer unit rolled over at about 7 AM.  This was a very serious crash, and as of this writing, is still on scene. State Police opened up one left lane by 8:30 AM, but the right lanes remain closed and we are reporting a standstill of traffic that stretches back to Route 62, a delay of at least seven miles.

Coming down from New Hampshire also took longer than usual, as the heavy snowfall stayed to the north.

Major routes leading into Downtown Boston were fine. We did not report any major problems south of the Pike, though the roads were wet and speeds were slower than usual.

One of the areas that we often see crashes during the morning rush hour is on 93 SB in Medford on the approach to the car pool lane. There is a lot of jockeying for position as people move out of the left lane, which is shortly going to become the car pool lane. Most people are very good about getting into their lane in an orderly fashion. They know the left lane is becoming the car pool lane and that with traffic jammed, they had better get out of that lane well in advance.

What I find troublesome is that there are A LOT of people who wait until the very last minute to get out of the left lane and push into the main line. During the average morning rush, traffic is jammed in this stretch. To merge in at this point means forcing yourself into bumper to bumper traffic. So what happens? Cars have to come to a full stop in the free flowing left lane and wait until they can squeeze into the main line.

This morning I saw 6 cars come to a full stop trying this move, two cars were so late to make the move that they had to cross the so