With the news that Bostonians have the 5th worst commute in the country, according to an annual study on traffic congestion by Texas A&M Transportation Institute, we'd like you to tell us how much time each day you spend in traffic.  What route do you take? Do you have any good backup routes?  On a scale of 1-10, how much do you dislike your commute?

I'll go first. I spend anywhere from 1.5-2.5 hours commuting from north of Boston into Boston each morning, and about 1-1.5 hours driving back.  I take a variety of routes, depending on traffic conditions, like 93S, 3S, and 28S.  On a scale of 1-10, my dislike of my commute is a very strong 10.

ZERO

 

I spent literally years sitting in my car on Route 128 and then I decided that it was wrong, so I got a new education and a new job and I work at home.  

 

It is great you highlighted this problem, as there are multiple pains this causes. The pain of the commute and the congestion make closer in suburbs unaffordable (any town near a major artery with good schools-Newton, Wellesley, Brookline, etc.)

What is the solution? There are 3 possible ones.

1. Highways-build more big arteries, meaning you expand and turn surface roads to highways, more cloverleafs and overpasses, expanded to more lanes. Identify and remove bottlenecks such as the Newton bottleneck after the toll station (5 lanes down to 3). Expand route 2 and 3 and turn roads like 85 and 117 into highways. This also means tear down the toll booths for efficiency and use full speed FAST LANE transponders.

2. Public Transport-Most importantly, build multi-level public garages at commuter rail locations. This encourages more ridership on trains and is a cheap fix to problems. These garages must be build over the petty NIMBY politics of neighboring homes for the good of the commonwealth and town overall vs. narrow interests. Expand the T to outer suburbs for goodness sake. Again, NIMBY politics from elitist towns on the red line path must be overruled for the good of the state. Ideally, push the red line out to Acton via Concord and Lexington and Arlington, push the green line all the way to Hopkinton. Make the trains run more often (every 15 minutes?) and run 24x7x365.

3. Encourage more technology parks-build up Devans and areas like Hudson (IBM) and Boxborough (Cisco) and others close to 495 into big employment centers and encourage startups to locate further out with state incentives. This will help congestion.

All these steps take is will and resolve. Or we can just keep whining without action.

I spent close to 15yrs commuting over 2hrs a day into boston from only about 20 miles outside the city.  If I left after 6 am it was longer.  Total waste of time and life.  Instead of taxing us even further to build rail roads to Springfield and Fall River, why not improve existing infrastructure and decrease the insane commute times from the near in suburbs.  Boston is such a TINY city to be the 5th worse in the nation really.

Maybe 5 minutes.  I left Metro-West because the constant "Smart Phone" type rush - go go go was for me, not living.  Not looking back.  Work from home and will buzz into Boston in the evening to teach and drive home at 10P.  ~ Plymouth, Mass

I spend zero.........  I got a job where I can work from home.  The only traffic I encounter is dodging my wife and daughter while I head to my office in the basement of my house.   I also do a lot of traveling all over the county.  So my commute is either to Logan or Providence.  The car sits at the airport all week.  Then what ever city I am in I always make sure to get a hotel near the place where I will be working.   The greatest part in the morning, when I am home, is watching TV in the morning and see all the traffice on 128, you poor saps....... 

Zero - I telecommute.  Which I know is a luxury and will probably live longer because of it.  However, to have spent over 20B on the Big Dig and still be ranked in the top 5 is another reason why Mass is the laughingstock of the country.   Not too mention the fact that the work done on the Big Dig was sub par in many areas and will required millions more to resolve.

More union work and more State Police offices sleeping in their cars making time and a half- bend over Tax Payers - and be prepared for more traffic.   But hey - aren't you glad you live in a state where the Dems are free to run roughshod all over ya.

It takes me 20 minutes to ride my bike from one end of Cambridge to the other. The same commute takes 15 minutes by car, and is far more stressful. I'd rather be on the bike. To those wishing for more "infrastructure": note that we just lived through the most expensive public highway project in history, and congestion is still terrible. THe problem with encouraging sprawl with highway contruction is that the growth of sprawl can easily outpace your capacity. A new lane on 128? That will be good for six months, tops. Here's the real problem: you're driving too damn much.

It take about 35 minutes in non-rush hour time to go 18 miles to work, mostly on Rt. 128. Rushhour expands the trip to an hour. During most of the year,, 128 is a nightmare, especially at night when the endless construction is going on. It is very frustrating to see these projects crawling along and see all those state troopers in cars running all night long doing the same thing that signs with arrows do in the other 49 states - what a waste of money!! We're the only state in the country that does this!

Leave at 6AM and you'll get there faster and without hardly any traffic.

What is the solution? There are 3 possible ones

Or you could just move closer.  I mean, why should we pave over my community so you can have a faster drive?  I guess NIMBY is okay when it benefits you?  If you choose the greener pastures of the 495 belt over closer, denser neighborhoods, then you have to man up and accept the trade-off.  I think a better answer is walkable infill development around transit nodes. 

In response to moopheus' comment:

Back before my back operation, I cycled everywhere, and would consistently beat cars to destinations in Cambridge, but 20 minutes from one end to the other? Define end.... Anyway, it's more like 30 minutes in a car these days. But I totally agree with you- while cycling _is_ stressful, it's also way more enjoyable and seems to relieve stress immediately, even while stressing.

I Spend about 1/2 hour in traffic while riding the bus. Large and lazy single occcupancy folks driving to work in Boston/Cambridge while sucking their coolattas, talking on the phone and applying makeup are the cause of said traffic.

2 to 4 hours round trip from Arlington to Boston using the MBTA.

In response to woodenhippo's comment:

I think the OP was talking about bypassing NIMBY concerns to expand mass transit out of the small handful of towns it currently serves...see http://futurembta.com/thefuturemaps/ for some cool ideas

20 miles due West outside boston takes about 45 minutes and over $5/day in tolls.  All in with gas and parking and it is just over $20 with subsidized parking, way more if not.  Train isn't much better and is full by Wellesley which is agonizing if you have had to wait through the 10 degree day delays.  Recently driving through the city on a Friday at 5PM was actually okay and I found myself praising the Big Dig.  Had that not happened, we would be first in this survey and daily delays would be LA-like...epic.  Solutions are not more roads however.  Mass Pike, 93 etc. cannot be widened...endgame.  Nor can more trains be added it even if we had the money.  Solutions will be multi-faceted:

1.  Government needs to encourage white collar telecommuting.  Tax incentives, this is what they are there for.  Internet was flukey and slow 15 years ago when gas was $1.25, no more.   Make this happen.  Should have standards like auto gas mileage.  by 2020, companies in certain industries that have 10% of their staff telecommuting gets $X tax break...we all need to prepare for the day where $8 gasoline cripples this country...it is coming.

2.  Government needs to try much harder to incentivize companies to move to Worcester, Springfield and Pittsfield..infrastructure basics are there and could be expanded. 

3.  Time-shifting.  Especially those companies that do the bulk of their work with others in other timezones.  Moving your company start hour from 8 to 9 or 9 to 10 for 90% of your workers would benefit everyone.

No one thing will work for every company but the government needs to think bigger than more trains, more tolls...once 1 million workers in this state start averaging 2hrs/day, 10hrs/wk, 40hrs/mo and 2000hrs/per year, the productivity loss will be in the 10s of billions and will creep into work hours vs. breakfast/dinner hour where they are now.

fall and spring in car 1hr 15 at least for what would be 30 minute commute with no traffic.  The useless high speed shoulder the were repaving and causing a lane shift on rt. 128 north and south from burlington to woburn certainly caused more congestion.. heavens forbid they make it another lane!!! 

and for all of you that "work at home" yeah, its so easy for everyone to do that!

In response to kindred's comment:

 I was not arguing that the expensive option of buidling more lanes and bigger highways was the best solution, it is one way to go. This would, as the comment suggested, pave over the green spaces and make a rural town seem much more urban.

A better way to go is to fix and extend the existing mass transit to really link the suburbs to the city. When the original T footprint was put in place, the inside 495 ring was not as populated. Now you can offload many car commuters to rail.

The simplest, cheapest solution with existing resources is to build garages for each commuter rail station. I am not suggesting mega-garages like Alewife, 2 story simple units to easily accomodate demand.

Extending T service would be a good next step to make mass transit easier. ALso, make the new mass transit bike friendly-(bike storage on the T/train) to allow bike from home to the station and then bike to work from the train options. Can you start to see the potential? Wouldnt that be an amazing place to live? Can we gather the collective will to realize that potential?

Also to the comment on the lamentable Big Dig-extending a T line or building a few parking garages is not at all on the same grand scale as the BD was.

Dorchester --> Westford --> Dorchester = 2-2.5 hours per day. 93N to 495S is the fastest, most direct route I've found.

42 miles each way, be doing it for 16 years, you get used to it.

There are worse places to work, my commute is mostly highways so I get to and from work in about an hour each way, with rarely any major traffic jams.