With toll plaza jams, ride home not EZ

There's nothing that curdles a relaxing vacation quite like getting snared in a nasty traffic jam on the road home.

Tipster Leslie Epstein tells GlobeWatch he was stuck in a frustrating gridlock on Interstate 95 at the Hampton toll plaza in New Hampshire as he returned to his Brookline home from Maine on Aug. 2. Although southbound traffic was heavy, due to the traditional Saturday-to-Saturday turnover of seasonal rental homes, Epstein says things got ugly as drivers approached the tolls.

"The traffic was normal for a vacation-time Saturday - heavy but moving easily, even swiftly down through New Hampshire and into Massachusetts. Suddenly everything came to a stop about four to five miles before the [Hampton] toll booth. Forty wasted moments later we were able to pay the toll," Epstein writes. "What is galling about the delay is that it was exacerbated by the actions - or inaction - of those responsible for the station. There was no real traffic and no delays whatsoever in the other direction. Yet no attempt was being made to increase the number of workable southbound booths at the expense of the equal and empty booths at the service of those heading north. The only possible effort I could see was a little old lady wandering about ineffectively with three red cones under her arm. Was there no supervisor at the station? No way of calling for instructions? No one able to make decisions anywhere? That endless wait could have been cut in half with what ought to have been a practically automatic response. If I am wrong about this, I'd like to know why."

A ride through the Hampton tolls by a Globe reporter the night after Epstein's trip found a fairly chaotic scene, though backups didn't appear to be miles long around 9 p.m. Cars loaded down with luggage, kayaks, bikes, and towing trailers weaved across the seven or eight southbound lanes to queue up at toll booths while the relative trickle of northbound traffic enjoyed smooth sailing as they passed easily through their allotted lanes.

Though the toll lanes can be adjusted for traffic volume - and often were until about three years ago - it's not as simple as flipping a sign anymore, said Bill Boynton, a spokesman for the New Hampshire Department of Transportation. "It's less flexible now because you have free-flowing lanes of EZ Pass" traffic, he said. Because those cars never stop at the toll both, it can be more difficult to reverse the lanes. The state began accepting EZ Pass transponders in 2005 to move traffic more readily through the toll plaza, a step that has tripled the overall number of vehicles passing through, he said. August typically records the highest volume of traffic at the Hampton tolls because of vacation travel, said Boynton. Many out-of-state and Canadian drivers, which comprise two-thirds of drivers passing through Hampton, are unfamiliar with the layout of Hampton's cash and EZ Pass lanes, and often cut across traffic to get into the right lane, which can add to delays, said Boynton.

Harvey Goodwin, who heads the NH Bureau of Turnpikes, said the agency monitors traffic approaching the tolls on summer weekends and will adjust lane configurations based on vehicle flow. Normally, the 16-lane plaza is divided into eight lanes for each direction, but can be split 9/7 or even 10/6 when traffic is heaviest, he said. The change involves a toll supervisor putting out 500 to 600 feet of orange cones. On the day Epstein was traveling, backups reached 35 to 40 minutes more than once that afternoon, so 10 southbound lanes were temporarily opened at one point, he said. At the time Epstein drove by, the supervisor "may have thought it was a temporary slug of traffic" and didn't feel opening more lanes was necessary, Goodwin speculated. Since toll prices went from $1 to $1.50 last fall, cash-paying drivers now spend more time interacting with toll takers either looking for their money or waiting for change, which also adds to delays, said Goodwin. Only about 40 percent of drivers going through the Hampton tolls use transponders, far lower than the 54 percent system-wide average, he said.

Harvey Goodwin, administrator,
New Hampshire Department
of Transportation
PO Box 2950
Concord, NH 03302