I wrote earlier here about why the removal of the traffic rotary in front of the Sagamore Bridge will not have the intended effect of eliminating traffic on the way from Boston to Cape Cod.
I have a longer piece in today’s Boston Globe on the same topic. Some people misunderstand my argument. The main point is that eliminating the rotary is likely to have a disappointingly small effect on the time it takes to get from Cape Cod to Boston. It might be so small as to be zero. Most people presume that if there’s a bottleneck (and the rotary is indeed a bottleneck), then if you eliminate the bottleneck, smooth sailing will ensue. My point is that the rotary is the bottleneck today. Eliminate and another bottleneck or series of bottlenecks will occur. Why? When you underprice something, congestion inevitably rations it. Don’t count on smooth sailing.
That doesn’t mean it’s always a mistake to widen roads or get rid of bottlenecks. It does mean that you shouldn’t naively assume that you will "solve" the traffic problem.
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Couldn't it be that the benefit is to incease throughput, which you seem to be saying will happen, rather than trip time?
It may be that getting more people onto the Cape is a real or perceived benefit, as in more traffic for local businesses, more demand creating higher property values, etc.
I'm sure you believe that people disagreed with your position because they misunderstood it but could you please allow for the possibility that all those people who made the effort to respond might actually disagree because they understood your position and think it is wrong?
You assume that roads are underpriced. The truth is that roads are underserved despite users paying enough.
Throughput probably will increase and, I suppose from an economic and/or road engineer's viewpoint, that is good. Living in Massachusetts as I do, however, has let me follow this debate for some years, and I can report that the main benefit that has been THE selling point by the governor et al is reduced time sitting in traffic, and quicker trip times. They haven't mentioned increasing capacity at all as far as I know (probably because they know that will turn off some people who fear the Cape getting overrun with more cars, development, etc.)
Thus, I think Russ is correct in saying that the flyover was sold as a way of cutting congestion, versus selling increased throughput. It will be interesting to see just how correct he will be. I myself got a good laugh the first time I heard proponents predict the end of Cape commuter headaches.
It makes me wonder, way back in the late 1950s, when Boston's Central Artery was opened, just how the proponents explained away the horrible conjestion on the highway that was a daily fact of life just half a dozen years after it opened. Monetarily low priced roads in areas where lots of people are trying to get to/from/through will always get rationed with congestion somewhere.
By the way, hi Russell. I was a student of yours in a microeconomics course back at Rochester, circa 1982. I totally enjoyed your class then. It really turned me on to economics, so much so I contemplated at the time switching out of engineering. Ultimately, I ended up in education with special ed kids. Go figure.
Anyhow….. It will be interesting to listen to next summer's Cape traffic reports.
My experience from 30 years ago is that Massachusetts highway engineers had a vendetta to carry out against motorists. For many decades there was a suicidal z-curve at the south end of the Mystic-Tobin bridge in Charlestown. It cost many innocent lives. Similarly the northernmost loop in the Rt 1 – 128 interchange in Lynnfield; the turn radius tightened abruptly; in any other state the designer would be prosecuted.
Given the under-engineered, over-priced Big Dig, methinks little has changed.
It would sure be nice if there were historical data about trip times, throughput, etc. The you could compare befores and afters for all sorts of changes to the system.
I think about the I5 in Southern California. When I moved to Orange County in 1988, it was 6 lanes from LA to San Onofre. They have since widened it to create what was at one time the widest interchange in the galaxy, added a toll road that circumvents the El Toro Y for drivers going up the 405, and peak traffic on the 5 is worse for longer periods of the day. The political solution, of course, is to widen it more rather than look for ways to spread peak traffic over time or space. Go figure…
Well, if you look at the trip time ratios, i.e. the time a trip takes during rush hour divided by the time a trip takes during uncongested hours, the metropolitan with more freeway lane-miles per capita fare better. Even with all the freeways in Los Angeles and with all the widenings over the past twenty years in Atlanta, population has increased even more significantly and congestion did as well.
Unfortunately, with declining returns to investment, it becomes very expensive for large metropolitan areas to meet the capacity demanded by a large population. The free rider problem of roads, where we can't charge everybody for each road they use, and the natural monopoly of roads as only one route is economical in most cases, present a big problem and I'm not altogether sure how to solve it.
You are approaching this very rationally, but I am simply sentimental about those old-fashioned Cape Cod rotaries, from the one at Sagamore to the one near Chatham.
I've been hearing about this flyover from my very aggravated parents who live in Sagamore Beach. They too hold out little hope that the flyover will improve traffic and still anticipate not going anywhere near the bridge on the 4th.