It’s a familiar sight in the Boston-area: miles of congestion. And it’s not your imagination if it seems worse than ever.
“I mean, we were just going to Braintree last night, and there was traffic,” said one driver who has stopped going into the city altogether.
Statistics show traffic has been worse of late.
“The periods of peak congestion seem to be starting earlier and lasting a little bit longer,” said Frank DePaola, administrator of the MassDOT Highway Division.
DePaola said traffic volume in Greater Boston has been up the last few months — more so than usual.
And he cites three key reasons:
- Unemployment has been dropping, which means people have more money to spend on travel.
- We’re in the throes of the April-to-November construction season.
- The cost of gasoline is down 30 cents a gallon from this time last year, and continues to drop, meaning people are feeling a bit more willing to hit the roads.
Another big problem? According to DePaola, traffic feeds on itself. The more traffic there is, the more crashes there are — which lead to more traffic.
“Distracted driving is becoming a larger cause for accidents around the commonwealth and around the country,” DePaola said.