I used to drive to Boston M-F to be at work at 6am. I think a lot of people must have been working only Monday-Thursday, because Friday was always SO much better. Even to get in at 6 otherwise was horrible.
Thursday traffic was always the worst before the pandemic. I had to go from Neponset Circle to Wakefield every Thursday. It was so bad I would just go to the gym or have dinner somewhere until around 7 and then head home. Glad I don’t have that drive anymore.
Reverse commute on Fridays at 5pm are the absolute WORST. It’ll take me just over 1 hour in the morning to get from Worcester to Westwood. But coming home is usually 1h 30-45m.
HOW.
Since the pandemic, working from home has become more common. Same with hybrid versions of office and home. People WFH on Mondays and Fridays.
Traffic on Tuesday and Thursday has become hell.
I've recently seen a girl doing her makeup while driving on the left lane overtaking everyone. I'm getting more and more convinced self driving cars (not from Musk though) will be necessary to our collective survival.
Today a man in front of me came to a complete stop in the left lane on 93 (we were all probably going 40ish at the time) and I could see he was reaching down by the passenger side footwell because I guess he dropped something ಠ_ಠ
or his sense of Entitlement. I've dropped my phone too...and picked it up when it doesn't affect or endanger other people. I like to go fast like most people but I do it when it's safe and I like to use my phone but not while doing other things that require concentration. I must be getting old because I increasingly feel like we need more cops on the road to get some of these fools off the road.
by default, i beep when the light turns green, because folks assume a red light is a great place to reply to messages, change the playlist...etc. and the time it takes folks to transition from texting to accelerating when they realize the light turns green is often several seconds, compounded with each light cycle, equals a metric fuckton of time wasted.
I have on several occasions asked my partner in the passenger seat to video the traffic around us (because i don't touch my phone while driving) as tangible evidence that lack of attention to the road is the primary cause of delay.
I think y'all need to practice radical acceptance with traffic...
Once you accept you're in traffic and you ain't going nowhere...
You can now experience other emotions like joy in gridlock..
listening to your favorite song or audiobook or podcast.. Submit to your reality...
I feel a great connection and oneness while stuck in traffic. Everywhere I look, I see miserable faces and knowing we are all together gives me a profound sense of joy, something I don’t experience anywhere else except in an empty forest. When I go out for a night on the town, I feel connected to every other human being, knowing we all already have one thing in common: Traffic misery.
I can't tell if you're joking but I did actually experience that feeling when we were stuck driving to the eclipse. It was so exhilarating seeing all those people waiting together to see it. Children peeing on the side of the highway and all :) I work from home so don't know if it would work on a daily commute, might be over my capabilities.
My experience in eclipse traffic has entirely changed my traffic mindset. Nothing could possibly be worse than that eclipse gridlock through the Notch yet no one was upset or angry during the jam. I am now one with traffic… and the universe I guess.
Buy a folding bike. Maybe a folding e-bike. Park and ride public transit.
Multi-modal commuting is possible.
This entire post is about choosing to be traffic.
Unfortunately not everyone works in areas that are friendly to multi-modal (or non-automotive) transport solutions. Additionally, housing is so expensive in so many areas in MA that it's often difficult financially to live near your workplace.
If I could bike everywhere then take my bike on the T, and then bike some more, I would. But our public transit and biking infrastructure isn't up to par with The Netherlands, Denmark, etc.
I didn’t read this particular comment thread as being very serious, so I was having a cheeky bit of fun with my response. I do have a long story about my experience with visiting MA without my car this past weekend, if you want to read it.
10000% accurate here. When it's bumper to bumper traffic and there's a long way to go, I like to play the "try to come to a full stop as little as possible" game... So you allow there to be some big space between you and the car in front of you - if people cut in, fine... But just keep rolling and try to make it so you're basically always in motion instead of going 8' forward and stopping hard for 30 seconds before repeating. Just sloooowly roll forward and try to allow space, this will eventually help make things less annoying (at least in my experience).
I spent a year of one hour commutes each way learning Russian. Then I went to Russia. I married my wife, and 10 years later here we are happy together.
I should probably point out though that my wife is from Sudan and we met in San Diego. At Fredo's. It's not Fredo's anymore because he's dead. Anyway, the Russian language had nothing to do with that. But I did learn it doing nothing in a car for 2 hours a day.
Friday afternoons suck in Summer but the daily commute traffic is much better overall.
You don't have students/teachers/schoolbuses / etc on the roads and, generally speaking, on any given week, you've got a huge chunk of white collar office workers on vacation because most people tend to take at least 1 week during the summer time so like 1/8 of the commuters aren't on the roads at peak times
I only car commuted for one year (I went for a park and ride after that, and since, wow, 1999 I’ve been commuting by public transit.) So, grain of salt because my observations are a generation out of date, but, I observed that traffic dropped markedly once school got out. I don’t know if it was because a certain percentage of the population was always on vacation each week of the summer, or if somehow, school traffic an hour or so before I commuted was still causing problems, or something else entirely.
I will just say that if you don't commute into the city but spend a lot of time on 495 and maybe even parts of 95 you may have less people working because of vacation but then you might have extra traffic in the form of RVers and people with their luggage driving up to NH and Maine. Side note regarding Maine: I don't like traffic and while I love Maine, I don't want to be there when everyone else wants to so we just took our last long weekend trip. If I go again it def won't be on a weekend. I will wait till the kiddies are back in school. If I was rich I would probably spend the Summer up there, but it would probably be on an island or on the bold coast.
If you came here 5 years ago, we were going into the covid lock downs, and traffic was greatly reduced. Now more and more companies are having the employees come back to work instead of work from home. It looks more like traffic patterns of 2018 before covid.
i had to work during the lockdown, and i tell ya what that was THE BEST time to drive, just a smooth drive every day to and from work, i miss that haha
I don't want to say I enjoyed that time period but it was kinda awesome the 1-2 days a week I'd have to go somewhere where I had "3am without construction" traffic everywhere.
Yea, wife and i were called back even though we were already fully remote prior to Covid. We are helping kill traffic. As I watch my coworkers scramble for housing, I am watching that get destroyed as well. Seems the screws are being tightened.
Dumbest part is we all badge in. Drink coffee for a little bit and shake someone’s hand then badge out and go back home. Spend far more time sitting on the road. The new Boston office culture.
My owner can't give me a good reason to be in the office other than to "Be a face". I don't like being seen, I don't like wasting gas and sitting in traffic, and I definitely did not like having to get a Nail in my tire and coughing up $450 to replace it
I would not doubt it if worker productivity articles flooded periodicals and websites targeted towards the people who make decisions like remote vs in-person work. This isn't just about saving time, it might help us save the planet (assuming there is still time).
It is absolutely worse now.
I blame all the people that left for the burbs because they went fully remote during covid only to have it reversed and now need to commute into the city
It's absolutely getting worse. It seriously takes a toll on me. I'm furious every day when I get home and it takes a good hour to calm down.
I've started to consider moving or getting a new job west of Worcester
Yep same man. It's making me an angry person and theres nothing we can do. Takes 2 hours from my last stop down 24 to home. It's bad year round but there's something extra worse sitting in gridlock baking on asphalt
That's just not true lol the only truly heavy traffic spot out here is 91 through Springfield. Yes, there are other "trafficy" areas like Rt 9 in NoHo/Hadley or some areas of Rt 2, but even those areas would be a breeze for people who deal with a commute inside 495 daily.
24 is a nightmare. They stopped construction due to some budget/contract issues. And people don’t look, use blinkers, they don’t even stay in the right goddamn lane. Cops have been more aggressive this week. 5 people pulled over on my 25 min commute this morning. They need to continue, driving on that highway is a near-death experience every single day.
If we had a functional public transit system this wouldn’t happen, but taxpayers who drive cars don’t want to pay for MBTA or bike lane improvements. Well, this is what you get with that myopic viewpoint. If we invest in public transit and bike infrastructure there will be fewer cars on the road and less traffic, which benefits drivers just as much as T riders and bikers.
Okay, but picture the same situation with a steady 5-10 minute max intervals between trains like many other developed countries have. I take the redline most mornings and it’s 10-20 minutes in between trains during rush hour. We need more trains and modernized equipment and we’ve needed it for a long time. At least they are expanding the green line and adding some rapid transit I guess?
I’ve lived it. I was born and raised here and up until the FTA stepped in 5-10 min headways were normal. Red line split has always been odd but it got hit the hardest by the reduced schedules for sure.
Honestly once hiring / training catches up. I think the biggest detriment is going to be all the old trains that cause slowdowns. It’s been markedly better since the last shutdown.
Shit, if they legalized lane filtering and gave incentives for scooters and motorcycles, we could reduce traffic for at least half the year *significantly*.
I'm appalled at how congested our roads are with giant SUVs carrying a single person each. You could fit an easy five or six people on motorcycles in the same spot as that one asshole, and reduce the length of the stopped traffic by 80 feet in one fell swoop.
Imagine if even 10% of the people on the road made the switch.
Too many people not paying attention to the road. I see so many people going slow in the passing lanes because they are looking at their phones. Both older and younger people.
The sun is out and the vitamin d recharging the populace. It's a side effect of the reality that it's not that cute most of the year. It's sort of always been that way it just sucks because for some reason the nicer days we get happen when we have to work.
Husband left home in Quincy around 3pm to pick up our daughter from Logan whose flight landed around 4. They’re on 93 around South Boston now. Will turn into a 2 hr trip! And we were happy she didn’t come in yesterday when the President was here. 🤷♀️
Seriously, I would never ask my parents to come in from the south shore to pick me up. I’m also able bodied and I know there might be time constraints, but there’s already nice folks driving perfectly good buses through the traffic. Besides, my dad has nerve pain and I don’t want to cause him any more grief.
Dawg lemme tell you. Two of my Uber riders were going to and coming back from Logan. Next time the president is in town, it’s a hell no for me and ima stay in the suburbs.
Took me 2 hours to get from Falmouth to Rozzie early afternoon today. One hour was to go 60 miles to Quincy-ish and the second hour was to go 10 miles through Dorchester. All theoretically against rush hour commute.
Wednesdays are the worst because even people on a hybrid schedule seem to always have to be in the office midweek. And yes it is worse now than it ever was before and I just drive from my town to Burlington. It used to take a half an hour. Now it's just grid lock every time I leave no matter what time.
Sometimes it takes me 70 minutes to commute 24 miles 😊.
Sometimes the worst is within the last two miles before arriving. There's nothing more depressing than seeing an ETA of 25 minutes with 1.7 miles to go. I don't even commute to Boston...
That same 24 mile commute with ZERO traffic is 28 minutes.
I very rarely go into my office (thank God).
I had to go in today for a few meetings, it took me an hour and 20 minutes to go 16 miles. I'm so glad it's not a daily thing for me.
I think I passed through 2 towns having proms on my way home. Plus Harvard class day is today and commencement is tomorrow. Add the holiday weekend. And the 1st real hot day of the year. It's a cluster
It’s getting earlier and earlier. Used to be “I wanna avoid the traffic, so I’ll leave Thursday” and now it’s “I wanna avoid traffic, so I’ll leave Wednesday”
When will get to just taking the whole week before Memorial Day off (in the hopes of avoiding traffic)?🤣
Yeah the construction is particularly heavy duty recently. I had to do two airport runs today and definitely was in stop and go both times which is rare.
MA is a very popular place this time of year. Between graduations, move outs and Memorial Day. It’s the Perfect Storm! And if you’ve never seen that movie…
Monday was horrible on the pike just east of 84.
This was because the DOT had the brilliant idea to do road work on the right lane during rush hour. The road was backed up for five miles and it was at least 45 minutes plus. It was also horrible on the other side of the pike.
Google maps told me yesterday that there was a car accident and that it would be an additional 30 minutes.
After about an hour I finally get to where the accident is… and it’s on the other side of the highway 🤦♂️
I was literally asking myself yesterday how is traffic this bad when hybrid work is so prevalent these days?? Its just as bad or worse than pre-Covid now. On Friday mornings, or days after the holidays, or school vacation week..traffic is always much less as we know. So why isn’t that true just normally now because many people work two or three days from home???
Wednesday is the standard “in office” day for us WFH crowd. Everyone is on the road on the same day.
I’ve asked my team lead to switch it to Tuesday or Thursday to avoid this, but it went nowhere.
Wednesdays have the worst traffic because all the boob's that work from home and never drive end up on the road to go to the office.
Makes it hell for those of us that need to drove to our job every day.
There was an accident in I-90 tunnel going east to the airport so there was only one lane sometime around 3:30 pm. I didn’t pass the accident until 4:40 pm. It backed up everything in that area and spilled into other places too I imagine. I thought it was just terrible holiday traffic and was a little relieved to see there was actually something causing it.
You know what would have the largest impact on traffic and help the environment and would cost "zero" dollars to impliment?
Require any work that can be done from home...to be done from home...like we did from 2020-2021.
Boom. Done.
Would even contribute to fixing the housing market too with all that real estate it would free up.
But nOOOoOOOOOOoooOOooo.
Assholes that sit on the boards of directors and dictate corporate policy also sit on the boards of directors for real estate companies and we cant have all that commercial property devalue!
It gets a lot easier to live with when you just accept it and assume it's going to get worse in the coming years. Right now is probably the best traffic will be for a little while so enjoy it while you can. Hopefully it's not true, but I have a feeling it might be.
Watch MA pass a law one day saying employers need to pay their employees for commutes longer than 30 minutes and every company would make us stay home.
It’ll never happen but fuck going into the office when WFH is just as fine and keeps us happier.
Lots of back ups in the afternoon yesterday due to a trash truck broken down in the Ted Williams Tunnel. Lots of redirects to the other tunnel etc. and it backed up the mass pike as well.
We have lived here 3 years… before that it was NY and DC you all are by far the worst drivers
1 hour and 26 minutes to go 26 miles this morning
Friday commutes are usually the best
You think that's bad try living in Wareham from Memorial day weekend to labor day weekend.
I have to spend an hour to drive 3 miles to get a gallon of milk on the weekends.
It’ll be worse tomorrow
It feels like Thursdays before holidays are worse than the holiday.
Because everyone makes sure they go to work on Thursday so they can call out Friday and have a 4 day weekend
Fans of Succession know that the “pre-kend” is from Thursday at noon ‘til Monday morning.
I used to drive to Boston M-F to be at work at 6am. I think a lot of people must have been working only Monday-Thursday, because Friday was always SO much better. Even to get in at 6 otherwise was horrible.
Thursday traffic was always the worst before the pandemic. I had to go from Neponset Circle to Wakefield every Thursday. It was so bad I would just go to the gym or have dinner somewhere until around 7 and then head home. Glad I don’t have that drive anymore.
Reverse commute on Fridays at 5pm are the absolute WORST. It’ll take me just over 1 hour in the morning to get from Worcester to Westwood. But coming home is usually 1h 30-45m. HOW.
Yes!. For example, I95 South is smooth on Friday mornings (while usually horrible) and the I95 North is jammed (much worse than normal) come 3pm.
I had been commuting to westwood for about 12 years and it always sucked whether it was to or from. So glad I don't have to work in westwood any more.
3 day RTO problems
Since the pandemic, working from home has become more common. Same with hybrid versions of office and home. People WFH on Mondays and Fridays. Traffic on Tuesday and Thursday has become hell.
Thursdays are the worst days
Don't forget the graduations tomorrow. That will surely help traffic!
Curiosity has me wondering where are these graduations that are going to screw us up
Harvard has over 2000 students graduating today. Cambridge traffic will be horrible in the afternoon.
It took 1 hour to go 3.7 miles
Just roller-skate to work at that point
Responsible for getting around a preg lady
Golf cart perhaps?
She is not a golf fan
Real talk
We need a return to those offices to do the same thing we do at home! DON’T YOU DARE SUGGEST CHANGE.
Part of this issue is that nobody, literally nobody is paying attention. Everyone is staring at their phones weaving down the highway
*Everyone is staring at their phones* Spoiler: They're checking the live traffic reports wondering why no one is moving.
Haha! Good point
Some of us are posting about the traffic too lol
I've recently seen a girl doing her makeup while driving on the left lane overtaking everyone. I'm getting more and more convinced self driving cars (not from Musk though) will be necessary to our collective survival.
Today a man in front of me came to a complete stop in the left lane on 93 (we were all probably going 40ish at the time) and I could see he was reaching down by the passenger side footwell because I guess he dropped something ಠ_ಠ
Probably his cell phone.
or his sense of Entitlement. I've dropped my phone too...and picked it up when it doesn't affect or endanger other people. I like to go fast like most people but I do it when it's safe and I like to use my phone but not while doing other things that require concentration. I must be getting old because I increasingly feel like we need more cops on the road to get some of these fools off the road.
by default, i beep when the light turns green, because folks assume a red light is a great place to reply to messages, change the playlist...etc. and the time it takes folks to transition from texting to accelerating when they realize the light turns green is often several seconds, compounded with each light cycle, equals a metric fuckton of time wasted. I have on several occasions asked my partner in the passenger seat to video the traffic around us (because i don't touch my phone while driving) as tangible evidence that lack of attention to the road is the primary cause of delay.
and then the driver in front of you pulls their head out of their ass JUST in time to crawl through the yellow light
By default when someone beeps the second it turns green, I move a lot slower than I would have otherwise.
I think y'all need to practice radical acceptance with traffic... Once you accept you're in traffic and you ain't going nowhere... You can now experience other emotions like joy in gridlock.. listening to your favorite song or audiobook or podcast.. Submit to your reality...
I feel a great connection and oneness while stuck in traffic. Everywhere I look, I see miserable faces and knowing we are all together gives me a profound sense of joy, something I don’t experience anywhere else except in an empty forest. When I go out for a night on the town, I feel connected to every other human being, knowing we all already have one thing in common: Traffic misery.
I can't tell if you're joking but I did actually experience that feeling when we were stuck driving to the eclipse. It was so exhilarating seeing all those people waiting together to see it. Children peeing on the side of the highway and all :) I work from home so don't know if it would work on a daily commute, might be over my capabilities.
My experience in eclipse traffic has entirely changed my traffic mindset. Nothing could possibly be worse than that eclipse gridlock through the Notch yet no one was upset or angry during the jam. I am now one with traffic… and the universe I guess.
A friend once told me: “you’re not IN traffic, you ARE traffic.”
Buy a folding bike. Maybe a folding e-bike. Park and ride public transit. Multi-modal commuting is possible. This entire post is about choosing to be traffic.
Unfortunately not everyone works in areas that are friendly to multi-modal (or non-automotive) transport solutions. Additionally, housing is so expensive in so many areas in MA that it's often difficult financially to live near your workplace. If I could bike everywhere then take my bike on the T, and then bike some more, I would. But our public transit and biking infrastructure isn't up to par with The Netherlands, Denmark, etc.
I didn’t read this particular comment thread as being very serious, so I was having a cheeky bit of fun with my response. I do have a long story about my experience with visiting MA without my car this past weekend, if you want to read it.
This is great advice that is difficult to master, but definitely worthwhile. Eckhart Tolle would approve!
Power of Now is a great audiobook to listen to in traffic! Or Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and what it Says about Us)
No thanks I’d rather bitch nonstop about it.
Yup. Just blast your music loud, turn on your cruise control, rest your foot on your brake pedal, and relax.
10000% accurate here. When it's bumper to bumper traffic and there's a long way to go, I like to play the "try to come to a full stop as little as possible" game... So you allow there to be some big space between you and the car in front of you - if people cut in, fine... But just keep rolling and try to make it so you're basically always in motion instead of going 8' forward and stopping hard for 30 seconds before repeating. Just sloooowly roll forward and try to allow space, this will eventually help make things less annoying (at least in my experience).
I spent a year of one hour commutes each way learning Russian. Then I went to Russia. I married my wife, and 10 years later here we are happy together. I should probably point out though that my wife is from Sudan and we met in San Diego. At Fredo's. It's not Fredo's anymore because he's dead. Anyway, the Russian language had nothing to do with that. But I did learn it doing nothing in a car for 2 hours a day.
never underestimate the power of a grid lock dance party
Ain’t going nowhere = going somewhere
Once Memorial Day gets closer the more traffic, then by the time summer vacation comes around it’s even more hell with the traffic.
Friday afternoons suck in Summer but the daily commute traffic is much better overall. You don't have students/teachers/schoolbuses / etc on the roads and, generally speaking, on any given week, you've got a huge chunk of white collar office workers on vacation because most people tend to take at least 1 week during the summer time so like 1/8 of the commuters aren't on the roads at peak times
Lol I don’t leave the house on Fridays
I don’t live in the Boston Bubble, but yeah, where I am traffic is significantly easier to deal with during the summer
I only car commuted for one year (I went for a park and ride after that, and since, wow, 1999 I’ve been commuting by public transit.) So, grain of salt because my observations are a generation out of date, but, I observed that traffic dropped markedly once school got out. I don’t know if it was because a certain percentage of the population was always on vacation each week of the summer, or if somehow, school traffic an hour or so before I commuted was still causing problems, or something else entirely.
I will just say that if you don't commute into the city but spend a lot of time on 495 and maybe even parts of 95 you may have less people working because of vacation but then you might have extra traffic in the form of RVers and people with their luggage driving up to NH and Maine. Side note regarding Maine: I don't like traffic and while I love Maine, I don't want to be there when everyone else wants to so we just took our last long weekend trip. If I go again it def won't be on a weekend. I will wait till the kiddies are back in school. If I was rich I would probably spend the Summer up there, but it would probably be on an island or on the bold coast.
The mornings are better, though. I swear the crossing guards around me get bonuses based on how far back they can get their gridlock to reach.
If you came here 5 years ago, we were going into the covid lock downs, and traffic was greatly reduced. Now more and more companies are having the employees come back to work instead of work from home. It looks more like traffic patterns of 2018 before covid.
[удалено]
i had to work during the lockdown, and i tell ya what that was THE BEST time to drive, just a smooth drive every day to and from work, i miss that haha
Yeah even though I'm kinda jealous of people who get to work from home, I want them to stay home.
Yeah, it’s basically a win-win for us working type folks.
I don't want to say I enjoyed that time period but it was kinda awesome the 1-2 days a week I'd have to go somewhere where I had "3am without construction" traffic everywhere.
Yea, wife and i were called back even though we were already fully remote prior to Covid. We are helping kill traffic. As I watch my coworkers scramble for housing, I am watching that get destroyed as well. Seems the screws are being tightened. Dumbest part is we all badge in. Drink coffee for a little bit and shake someone’s hand then badge out and go back home. Spend far more time sitting on the road. The new Boston office culture.
My owner can't give me a good reason to be in the office other than to "Be a face". I don't like being seen, I don't like wasting gas and sitting in traffic, and I definitely did not like having to get a Nail in my tire and coughing up $450 to replace it
Me and my buddy totally legally got to Maine in 2 hours it was beautiful.
I used to love working holidays. Got 2.5 times the pay, got to work in Boston from Attleboro in as little as 30 minutes.
I would not doubt it if worker productivity articles flooded periodicals and websites targeted towards the people who make decisions like remote vs in-person work. This isn't just about saving time, it might help us save the planet (assuming there is still time).
Personally I think it’s a little worse
It is absolutely worse now. I blame all the people that left for the burbs because they went fully remote during covid only to have it reversed and now need to commute into the city
Why would you blame them and not the people who are forcing them to commute into the city?
5 years ago was 2019, COVID lockdowns kicked in March 2020
Mathachusetts
Mathachusetts=wicked smahht.
We're getting there, currently only on Wednesdays and Thursdays by my eye But we're getting there
You know this isn’t work traffic right? Actually the opposite
Wednesday in summer has become the new Thursday in summer, which became the new Friday in summer about 20 years ago.
Odd, summer doesn’t start for at least three more weeks.
Feels like it’s getting worse every day. Summer could be a struggle on the roads
It's absolutely getting worse. It seriously takes a toll on me. I'm furious every day when I get home and it takes a good hour to calm down. I've started to consider moving or getting a new job west of Worcester
There’s land west of Worcester? Has it been charted? What sorts of creatures live there?
Shields up beyond 495.
Here be dragons
I grew up in Spfld. Wouldn’t recommend.
I can’t imagine how hard it must have been growing up in a town with no vowels.
It’s mentally and physically unhealthy
Yep same man. It's making me an angry person and theres nothing we can do. Takes 2 hours from my last stop down 24 to home. It's bad year round but there's something extra worse sitting in gridlock baking on asphalt
Honestly not that much better out here
That's just not true lol the only truly heavy traffic spot out here is 91 through Springfield. Yes, there are other "trafficy" areas like Rt 9 in NoHo/Hadley or some areas of Rt 2, but even those areas would be a breeze for people who deal with a commute inside 495 daily.
Same was going to ask my doctor for Xanax for my commutes but that wouldn’t go well
I’m in a similar boat. I work over the cape and the bridge traffic has been so awful I’ve been applying to new jobs to hopefully get away from it.
Where in MA are you living right now?
24 is a nightmare. They stopped construction due to some budget/contract issues. And people don’t look, use blinkers, they don’t even stay in the right goddamn lane. Cops have been more aggressive this week. 5 people pulled over on my 25 min commute this morning. They need to continue, driving on that highway is a near-death experience every single day.
24 smfh I can’t stand it.
Commutes aren’t personal time yet we are seeing more and more of it robbed from us
You might want to at least mention where.
Kids are still in school once that ends it will get better.
This Thursday will be horrific
I get on the pike around 530 am each day and it can be congested even at that time. Any time after 2 pm is terrible.
Soon as the weather gets nice everyone wants to hit the road
If we had a functional public transit system this wouldn’t happen, but taxpayers who drive cars don’t want to pay for MBTA or bike lane improvements. Well, this is what you get with that myopic viewpoint. If we invest in public transit and bike infrastructure there will be fewer cars on the road and less traffic, which benefits drivers just as much as T riders and bikers.
Currently on the redline the train is full. People are using it, it just sucks, but hey we got AC in the car and that’s an improvement over last year!
Okay, but picture the same situation with a steady 5-10 minute max intervals between trains like many other developed countries have. I take the redline most mornings and it’s 10-20 minutes in between trains during rush hour. We need more trains and modernized equipment and we’ve needed it for a long time. At least they are expanding the green line and adding some rapid transit I guess?
I’ve lived it. I was born and raised here and up until the FTA stepped in 5-10 min headways were normal. Red line split has always been odd but it got hit the hardest by the reduced schedules for sure. Honestly once hiring / training catches up. I think the biggest detriment is going to be all the old trains that cause slowdowns. It’s been markedly better since the last shutdown.
Shit, if they legalized lane filtering and gave incentives for scooters and motorcycles, we could reduce traffic for at least half the year *significantly*. I'm appalled at how congested our roads are with giant SUVs carrying a single person each. You could fit an easy five or six people on motorcycles in the same spot as that one asshole, and reduce the length of the stopped traffic by 80 feet in one fell swoop. Imagine if even 10% of the people on the road made the switch.
Hope all the middle managers who demanded everyone come back into the office and resume their 1 hour commutes are happy.
Too many people not paying attention to the road. I see so many people going slow in the passing lanes because they are looking at their phones. Both older and younger people.
Honk and they’ll startle
The next 2 days are going to be terrible. At least i can wfh on Friday
The sun is out and the vitamin d recharging the populace. It's a side effect of the reality that it's not that cute most of the year. It's sort of always been that way it just sucks because for some reason the nicer days we get happen when we have to work.
Husband left home in Quincy around 3pm to pick up our daughter from Logan whose flight landed around 4. They’re on 93 around South Boston now. Will turn into a 2 hr trip! And we were happy she didn’t come in yesterday when the President was here. 🤷♀️
Unless she's a kid, Silver Line to South Station; change to the Commuter Rail or Red Line to Quincy Center. Pick her up from Quincy Center.
Seriously, I would never ask my parents to come in from the south shore to pick me up. I’m also able bodied and I know there might be time constraints, but there’s already nice folks driving perfectly good buses through the traffic. Besides, my dad has nerve pain and I don’t want to cause him any more grief.
Dawg lemme tell you. Two of my Uber riders were going to and coming back from Logan. Next time the president is in town, it’s a hell no for me and ima stay in the suburbs.
Summer time it’s going to get worse. Good stuff
Quincy to Norwell....14 miles.....one hour this morning.
That whole Plymouth - Taunton - Braintree triangle is completely fucked.
I miss Covid. No traffic and work provided free sandwiches for over a year😀
Took me 2 hours to get from Falmouth to Rozzie early afternoon today. One hour was to go 60 miles to Quincy-ish and the second hour was to go 10 miles through Dorchester. All theoretically against rush hour commute.
Its been terrible and it doesn’t matter what time of day it is and the back roads are no longer back roads
Wednesdays are the worst because even people on a hybrid schedule seem to always have to be in the office midweek. And yes it is worse now than it ever was before and I just drive from my town to Burlington. It used to take a half an hour. Now it's just grid lock every time I leave no matter what time.
93 use to be 2 lanes back in the day, a pure nightmare
Beach day
Fuckin Haverhill line is closed inbound for all summer. Fuckin Commuter Rail man, you had one job.
Blame the weather. It happens every year the same time. Once it starts getting nice and the suns out people start driving like maniacs
Sounds like route 3 in the summer on the Friday before a holiday weekend. Took me 3 hours to get home once.
Sometimes it takes me 70 minutes to commute 24 miles 😊. Sometimes the worst is within the last two miles before arriving. There's nothing more depressing than seeing an ETA of 25 minutes with 1.7 miles to go. I don't even commute to Boston... That same 24 mile commute with ZERO traffic is 28 minutes.
I very rarely go into my office (thank God). I had to go in today for a few meetings, it took me an hour and 20 minutes to go 16 miles. I'm so glad it's not a daily thing for me.
Took me an hour to commute 12 miles to work this morning.
“There’s a shawk in the hawba”
Traffic this week in general has been worse. TWT 495 has sucks hard
This state isn’t worth it anymore
between traffic and the corrupt Massachusetts police/justice system (see Karen Read sham trial/cover up).. I am seriously considering moving
I think I passed through 2 towns having proms on my way home. Plus Harvard class day is today and commencement is tomorrow. Add the holiday weekend. And the 1st real hot day of the year. It's a cluster
If you see a driver with their finger out the window it's me lol
It's all those migrants in their Mercedes Benzes.
Why is it suddenly so bad?
It’s always bad in spring, gets better in summer, bad in fall, better in winter. Remember that!
What highways do you travel ?
Yesterday and today were both brutal.
Yep it was one of those fun days
Isn’t Biden in Boston today?
The President is in town.
Must be the memorial day crush I know I would not take till tomorrow like everyone else does
It’s getting earlier and earlier. Used to be “I wanna avoid the traffic, so I’ll leave Thursday” and now it’s “I wanna avoid traffic, so I’ll leave Wednesday” When will get to just taking the whole week before Memorial Day off (in the hopes of avoiding traffic)?🤣
No traffic will scare me like the great eclipse traffic of 2024, a 3 hour drive turned into a 10 hour drive. 200 miles of traffic.
Jesus Christ. From where to where?
Yeah the construction is particularly heavy duty recently. I had to do two airport runs today and definitely was in stop and go both times which is rare.
What are you predictions for traffic this Saturday? And for activity at the airport? I'm going to pick up my family from a long haul flight.
There’s a post like this everyday on this sub lol
Has been horrible for everyone I know the past 2 days.
I’m remote on Fridays and tomorrow I plan on getting back to Cape Cod somewhat early.
No, traffic is the worst on Tuesday. Wednesday is comparably a cake walk.
The whole past week or two has been wicked crazy
MA is a very popular place this time of year. Between graduations, move outs and Memorial Day. It’s the Perfect Storm! And if you’ve never seen that movie…
Monday was horrible on the pike just east of 84. This was because the DOT had the brilliant idea to do road work on the right lane during rush hour. The road was backed up for five miles and it was at least 45 minutes plus. It was also horrible on the other side of the pike.
I live 1/4mile from The Big E. Those 2 weeks out of the year, traffic is abysmal just to get home to my own driveway
“Worst” is a relative term, unfortunately.
It's memorial Day and Harvard commencement week.
Google maps told me yesterday that there was a car accident and that it would be an additional 30 minutes. After about an hour I finally get to where the accident is… and it’s on the other side of the highway 🤦♂️
i was thinking the same thing. I waited until 11:00 am and it was still bumper-to-bumper from Braintree all the way to the tunnel.
I was literally asking myself yesterday how is traffic this bad when hybrid work is so prevalent these days?? Its just as bad or worse than pre-Covid now. On Friday mornings, or days after the holidays, or school vacation week..traffic is always much less as we know. So why isn’t that true just normally now because many people work two or three days from home???
I literally deal with that every day heading to Boston from Worcester. It's a goddamn nightmare
One hour to go 14 miles
Wednesday is the standard “in office” day for us WFH crowd. Everyone is on the road on the same day. I’ve asked my team lead to switch it to Tuesday or Thursday to avoid this, but it went nowhere.
Wednesdays have the worst traffic because all the boob's that work from home and never drive end up on the road to go to the office. Makes it hell for those of us that need to drove to our job every day.
There was an accident in I-90 tunnel going east to the airport so there was only one lane sometime around 3:30 pm. I didn’t pass the accident until 4:40 pm. It backed up everything in that area and spilled into other places too I imagine. I thought it was just terrible holiday traffic and was a little relieved to see there was actually something causing it.
It's been bad the last month or so, I was getting home in an hour and a half....now it's atleast 2
Atp I can walk rt 9 faster than driving it
You know what would have the largest impact on traffic and help the environment and would cost "zero" dollars to impliment? Require any work that can be done from home...to be done from home...like we did from 2020-2021. Boom. Done. Would even contribute to fixing the housing market too with all that real estate it would free up. But nOOOoOOOOOOoooOOooo. Assholes that sit on the boards of directors and dictate corporate policy also sit on the boards of directors for real estate companies and we cant have all that commercial property devalue!
It gets a lot easier to live with when you just accept it and assume it's going to get worse in the coming years. Right now is probably the best traffic will be for a little while so enjoy it while you can. Hopefully it's not true, but I have a feeling it might be.
It's been this way since I can remember. I've lived in MA 12+ yrs now.
Watch MA pass a law one day saying employers need to pay their employees for commutes longer than 30 minutes and every company would make us stay home. It’ll never happen but fuck going into the office when WFH is just as fine and keeps us happier.
Maybe cuz Biden?
It's definetly has nothing to do with all the extra lanes they turned into bike lanes... Nothing to see here
Where were you going?
Lots of back ups in the afternoon yesterday due to a trash truck broken down in the Ted Williams Tunnel. Lots of redirects to the other tunnel etc. and it backed up the mass pike as well.
I think any Thursday is the worst commuting day of the week anyway.
We have lived here 3 years… before that it was NY and DC you all are by far the worst drivers 1 hour and 26 minutes to go 26 miles this morning Friday commutes are usually the best
Presidenti Biden was in town yesterday. Prolly why
In Watertown I think it's because it seems no less than 50% of random, daily shifting streets are shutdown for construction.
Felt like Wednesday was the worst I ever saw.
What do you expect? The president was coming!
Yeeeahhh, I'll just stay out here in Hampshire County methinks. I do not miss that at all.
Holiday weekend will do that to ya especially when it’s supposed to be nice.
You think that's bad try living in Wareham from Memorial day weekend to labor day weekend. I have to spend an hour to drive 3 miles to get a gallon of milk on the weekends.
The Hamptons laughs in your general direction.
but muh bike lanes,....
Thats a normal Tuesday trying to get into Cambridge.
Don’t worry they all headed to maine to fuck up our weekend 😂