choke points.
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If there were any doubt that Conrad had the
right idea (“exterminate the brutes,” for those of you who couldn’t
fight your way through to the end of Heart
of Darkness), any given morning commute on the highways of
Boston should set you straight.
The biggest single drawback of living in Cambridge is my commute. I think of the highway system in the Boston area as the traffic equivalent of the circulatory system of a system admin with coke-bottle glasses whose diet of bacon double cheeseburgers, twinkees, and cheetos makes Kartman on Southpark look like Richard Simmons. It doesn’t matter which way I go to work; there’s always a choke point. If I go I-93 to 128 South, it’s where they intersect; if I get there any later than 7am, it’s invariably backed up. You would think that if they have a four-lane highway connecting into another four-lane highway, they might splurge and go for the double-lane exit, but no. The single-lane exit backs way up, leaving you parked in the right lane while people try to merge through you onto the highway from the right and other people whiz by at 80 mph one lane to the left. Two mornings in a row the other month, after some flooding that closed off some other routes, it took me more than 35 minutes to go less than a mile trying to get through this intersection. For comparison, on a good day, if I leave early enough, I can make it all the way from my place to work in under 30 minutes. All of my other routes require me to fight my way through Cambridge, get to Route 2, and then turn onto 128 North. The Route 2 – 128 North intersection is another disaster, but this time it’s because of the 128 South exit, which is on the far side of the overpass. Invariably, all the commuters coming down Route 3 get clogged up on 128 South en route to the turnpike, so the 128 South exit on Route 2 backs up so far that it blocks the exit for 128 North. There’s a breakdown lane, so people usually hop into it to bypass all the 128 South traffic; however, there’s a “No travel in breakdown lane” sign posted, and just to make things better, there’s this cop who once or twice a month decides to go park his car there right before the exit and hand out tickets to anyone unfortunate enough not to see him in time to hop back into the lane with all the southbound backup. It’s usually pretty easy to tell the days he’s there, though…traffic backs up for more like a mile around the bend instead of just the quarter mile leading up to the off ramp. Thank you, sir... And then there are my backup routes, which I’ve never even tried to use…like trying to go south on Monsignor O’Brien to get to Storrow, or trying to get from either Storrow or Memorial through Fresh Pond to Route 2. And you thought Iraq was a quagmire. And of course the choke points bring out the best in people. There are more people trying to cut in line and force their way in than there are rednecks at a NASCAR race. It’s borderline anarchy, on the verge of complete social breakdown; it's like the line at a Dunkin Donuts, but meaner, behind the isolation of the windshields. I don’t need a trip up the river to know what’s in Kurtz’s dark little heart; I’ve got Boston. |