Damn This Traffic Jam. Welcome to Boston.

“Damn this traffic jam,

How I hate to be late,

It hurts my motor to go so slow.

Damn this traffic jam,

Time I get home my supper'll be cold, Damn this traffic jam.”

--James Taylor, 1977

So, what’s everybody complaining about in the Boston area these days?

What’s the common lament, the most spoken grievance, the ubiquitous topic of critical conversation around the water cooler, at the dinner table, over a beer at the sports bar, or in between the local gossip at church coffee hour? We Massachusetts’ folks, especially those of us who live within the Route 495 belt; like our Puritan forebears we can be a dour lot. We can always find something, anything to kvetch about, if only given time and opportunity. 

We can be cranky Yankees with the best of our New England neighbors, right up there with crusty Maineiacs, and vexatious Vermonters, and negative New Hampshirites, and crabby Connneticutters, and irascible Rhode Islanders. The weather? Too hot, too cold, too wet, too whatever, though these past few weeks have been an exception to our weather whining.  Sports? What’s with the Sawx?! They were wicked bad this year.  And the Yankees? They will always be the Evil Empire.

But here’s the best trigger to get a fellow Bay Stater going, a sure-fire way to watch veins pop out and faces redden and blood pressures rise and the spittle fly. Ask them about the traffic. The %$#@ TRAFFIC!!!! The God-awful traffic. The epic traffic. The endless traffic.

The miles long back-ups on the Mass Pike. The bottleneck on the way to the Cape even though you left for your weekend away at 2 a.m. Wednesday morning.  The gridlock in downtown Boston, passing just four blocks in forty minutes. The jam on 128 at 1 o’clock on a Sunday afternoon. WHERE ARE ALL THESE PEOPLE GOING!!!!! Heck, even a long line of cars backed up as they wait to get a parking space in the mall on a Thursday morning. DOESN’T ANYONE WORK ANYMORE!?

And the traffic, the increasingly worse traffic, the traffic that now seems to be around not just in rush hour but in all hours, in any hours: it’s not just our imagination that it is so, so horrible and unrelenting. Traffic in Boston is the absolute worst it has ever been.  According to a 2018 nationwide traffic report and scorecard, created by INRIX, the world’s foremost traffic research company, the greater Boston area now ranks number one in the United States for gridlock.

We’re number 1!!

If you drive to work or drive to a game or drive to your relative’s or drive to the doctor’s office chances are better than average that you will sit in a long line of cars.  Over the course of a year, the average driver in these parts loses 164 hours sitting in traffic.  That’s about ten full waking days of having your fanny planted in the car seat while folks all around lean on their horns and chain smoke angrily and fiddle with the radio and check their phones and gulp their extra-large DD’s coffee while not moving one inch on the pavement. For vehicular verities, we outrank, in descending order, Washington, D.C., Chicago, New York City and Los Angeles, for the worst traffic in the nation.

Thank goodness we can leave our cars home and just take the most modern and efficient subways and commuter rail trains in the country, huh? HA, HA, HA! I rode on a Red Line car the other day and realized, by the ancient look of it, that it might have actually been in service when the line first began operation in 1968. I probably rode that very same car as a seven-year old with my Mom, on my way to Jordan Marsh for school shopping, then on to Brigham’s for an ice cream cone. The “T” is, truth be told, often terrible: in its service, in its dependability, in its cleanliness, in its propensity to transport one long suffering downtown employee to her workplace, and just in time for lunch.           

We can complain and even laugh about the traffic and the “T” and the trains but this is serious stuff.  Traffic is making me and many other lifelong lovers of the Boston area, this beautiful place we all call home, ask some hard questions. Is the increasing hassle of living here finally worth it? How much longer can we put up with 24/7 traffic, unchecked development, sky high housing prices, and the neglect of our government leaders to actually do anything, something, to address these issues? Will our beloved Boston become just another northeastern, overpriced, congested, economically out of reach, cramped and crowded city?

Governor Baker? Senate President Karen Spilka? House Speaker DeLeo? Mayor Walsh? Are you there? Or maybe just stuck in traffic like the rest of us?  We’ve reached a tipping point: that’s no joke.

Perhaps Massachusetts’ own singer songwriter James Taylor, sums it up best: “Now when I die, I don't want no coffin, I thought about it, All too often. Just strap me in, Behind the wheel, and bury me with, My automobile.”  

Damn this traffic jam.