When I am not traveling on business around the country, I am usually traveling to and from my office and wishing I were only having to travel around the country. You see, I have the distinct honor of living in the Greater Boston area, which proudly boasts some of the worst commuter traffic in the nation. To understand the true nature of my daily journey, I provide to you the following information...
To start, I actually commute into the Greater Boston area (Watertown, MA, to be more precise) from lovely and scenic Salem, NH (no - not the "witch town"; the other Salem in the area).
Map courtesy Live Search Maps
35 miles total. 35 freakin' scenic miles. I use the word "scenic" because you can often take in every detail of a given location when you are sitting in the exact same place for an extended period of time. Now, regular traffic congestion is an unfortunate nuisance during rush hour in any large metropolitan area, but my route takes me through several areas where we see "Boston Traffic Control" at its finest -
- Mistimed stoplights. Apparently someone many years ago decided that the best way to control traffic is by sequencing stop lights in such a way as to prevent you from ever making it through more than two consecutive intersections in a row. This does a wonderful job of reducing the risk of high-speed accidents. Of course, building a brick wall across the road would have about the same effect.
Fortunately, all of this gridlock does afford me some wonderful views, like...
...the backs of other vehicles. While this may not seem so hot, it at least blocks the view of the rest of the half-mile backup, which is usually too depressing to face. Ironically, when I snapped the picture above, I realized that a quick glance to the right provided me with a great photo opportunity that summed up my feelings at the moment...
- Traffic Circles/Rotaries. Anyone who has driven in Boston probably has a great story about traversing one of our traffic circles (also referred to as "rotaries"). You see, someone decided that, in an attempt to counteract the gridlock caused by poorly sequenced lights, they would have intersections with no lights at all. Instead, people would use their better judgement and driver courtesy to enter the rotary at the appropriate time and yield when necessary. Of course, this utopian vision of commuting only exists in science fiction and is replaced with anarchy and chaos, resulting in... more traffic.
Witness as I approach one of the four rotaries I endure on my morning commute....
Still a good half mile away. I am shielded from the oncoming terror by a wall of traffic;
I am now less than a quarter mile away and can see the evil rotary off in the distance. My heart begins to race;
I am upon the cursed rotary. What you do not see in this picture is the car to my left that, like every day, blocks my view of oncoming traffic, bolts into the traffic circle at the last second and cuts into my lane. Oops - forgot to mentioning the subsequent locking up of the brakes.
All in all, my 35 mile commute lately averages 90 minutes to complete. If not for my XM radio and the comedy channels to try to break the tension, I likely would have snapped a while back.
By the way - did I mention that I reverse this process each evening?