By adamg on Tue., 2/3/2015 - 3:48 pm 
Cram and jam on inbound Rutherford Avenue in Charlestown. Photo by Tucc06.
Because it's sounding like downtown and surrounding areas are at gridlock right now - and it can't possibly be because of people heading to the Beanpot, can it?
Jaci reports:
Two lanes are trying to exit at Charles MGH off Storrow. Those two lanes are not moving.
Ashley Steriti adds:
Revere to Back Bay via car. 75 minutes and still in the tunnel. Can't even see the light of Storrow Drive yet
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I have a friend who works in PR
By Will LaTulippe
Tue, 02/03/2015 - 5:29pm
He tells me that it took him two hours to get to work today. I asked him "was there something going on at the college today for which you absolutely positively had to show up in person?" He told me no. He's no liar.
This guy can do all of his work via telephone or e-mail. So why didn't he? This is clearly a problem that impacts the whole damn community. Employers need to get realistic about travel demands in Boston.
Why? Because despite all the
By Saul
Tue, 02/03/2015 - 5:45pm
Why? Because despite all the hype of working from home, there's still value in seeing your co-workers in person.
Barely anyone has been in my office the past week and finally tomorrow most are going to try to make it in, even though we have a very generous work-from-home policy.
Otherwise, what do you propose? That no one who absolutely needs to be at the office commutes for the next week?
I agree on the value of seeing co-workers
By Will LaTulippe
Tue, 02/03/2015 - 5:48pm
But it's not tenable every day there's this much snow on the ground for hundreds of thousands of people to go into the same small area at the same two times each day and do that. I would also like a pony and to have a diet that consists entirely of ice cream.
I mean, just look at the picture. There is nobody in that picture who is helped by sitting in that line.
So when will it be a good
By Saul
Tue, 02/03/2015 - 5:56pm
So when will it be a good time to commute, with more snow forecast? Should there be a system where if your company name starts with A-M you come in certain days, and N-Z the others?
Unless you propose that everyone who can work from home just stays off the roads and trains and buses for the next ___ weeks, what do you suggest?
Staggered hours
By Will LaTulippe
Tue, 02/03/2015 - 6:12pm
Half the city works 9-5 M-W-F-T-Th the next two weeks and 12-8 T-Th-M-W-F the next two weeks. The other half works the opposite hours.
I'm reading above about the MGH thing. Does anybody want an appointment at 10 PM? If I were sick today, I would visit a doctor at 10 PM to avoid the traffic if I could and my condition permitted it. If I were a doctor, I would work from 2 PM to 10 PM because I don't like to get up early. I would serve the population that would want to avoid traffic or doesn't like to get up in the morning. It's a big city, the population is there to support that, in theory.
Tell the schools this
By SwirlyGrrl
Tue, 02/03/2015 - 6:15pm
Easy for someone without kids to make these pronouncements. If you have younger ones who can't get off and out on their own, you are at the mercy of the schedule the school sets.
I mean, I was a kid once
By Will LaTulippe
Tue, 02/03/2015 - 6:29pm
I got to school every day. I walked or took a bus. Mom didn't drive or work, and Dad drove the family car to work early in the morning way before school.
Every child 13 and under should have a parent in the home who sees them off to school and is at home when they return from school. I hate to make that argument, because people misinterpret it as "Will thinks women shouldn't have jobs," at which point, I remind them that I said PARENT in the home, not MOTHER.
We used to sustain families in this country on one household income. Then both parents started working and drove up the price of everything for everybody else. I mean, okay, but there's real consequences to that.
Correction
By SwirlyGrrl
Tue, 02/03/2015 - 6:34pm
We used to sustain families in this country on one household income. Then wages were systematically suppressed in order to "prevent inflation", and eroded relative to the price of everything, and both parents started working to keep families out of poverty.
FTFY
I don't recall that from any history classes
By Will LaTulippe
Tue, 02/03/2015 - 6:41pm
I sure wish that phenomenon had been taught to me in 11th grade when I studied 20th century America. No sarcasm.
what?
By bibliotequetres...
Tue, 02/03/2015 - 6:55pm
Will, there are A LOT of factors that have driven up the cost of living over the past 50 years. Dual income families are one, sure, but hardly the only one or the most important. And the factors are variable by location/region.
You are arguing that one or two adults combine to give up a minimum of 13 years of income and professional progress, more if they have more than one child. I don't know what your field is, but most professions I know of are constantly adding knowledge and skills that don't allow gaps of 6.5-13 years without permanent damage to your hireability. And does a 13 year old really need a parent waiting at home for him every day?
I think it would be great if we did more to allow all parents to spend more time with their kids, but staying home for 13 years is not necessary.
13 years might be pushing it
By Will LaTulippe
Wed, 02/04/2015 - 12:16am
But I also sincerely believe that I have better intelligence and manners than most people...and that the path to that was my upbringing, which consisted of my mom being in the home when I returned from school in the early grades. I have the best parents in the game. They taught me hard work and the value of education and never once stuck me in a daycare.
My field? I host trivia nights at bars (and write them), and I drive rideshare on the side.
I can't tell if you're being
By Saul
Tue, 02/03/2015 - 6:18pm
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or serious about the governor's office dictating when employees of private firms should be allowed into their offices.
I'm not big on government intervention
By Will LaTulippe
Tue, 02/03/2015 - 6:20pm
So, make it a tax incentive and not an edict. "Help us with traffic. Send us timesheets verifying that you staggered employee hours during snow periods and you get a 1% corporate tax break."
How about we just charge
By Eric
Tue, 02/03/2015 - 9:35pm
How about we just charge congestion pricing on drivers in the city during peak hours so that we don't punish the majority of downtown office workers that do actually take the train to work?
ya
By cybah
Tue, 02/03/2015 - 6:12pm
I'm in the same boat.. I had the flu the 2nd week of January so I was out for a week. Then I came back for a week and worked. Then snow day(s) (two)last week, and one this week.
My job requires me to be in the office, there's very little I can do at home since I need to physically be here to do a good portion of my job.
I'm getting behind because of all these days out of the office....
What is your job and where is your job?
By Will LaTulippe
Tue, 02/03/2015 - 6:13pm
Our elected officials won't fix this, I guess it's up to me to ask every Bostonian what they do and how we can fix their work commuting circumstances.
Umm
By cybah
Tue, 02/03/2015 - 6:17pm
IT Support Personnel (Systems Engineer)
DTX.
You need to handle computers
By Will LaTulippe
Tue, 02/03/2015 - 6:21pm
Okay, that calls for going to work. Next!
We had in-person meetings
By SwirlyGrrl
Tue, 02/03/2015 - 6:20pm
We have had several telecommute days, but we don't have the VPN capacity for that to work smoothly.
Even if we could fix that, we have people in from all over the US today, and all over the US and Europe at the end of the week.
Then I get to be one of those people who goes to another part of the country to be a part of a meeting of people from all over the world, because what I need to do has to happen in-person.
Have you ever had a day job, Will? If not, go get one and learn. Consider as well that people who work in laboratories cannot telecommute, nor can custodians, or people working in hospitals or maintenance people or people who maintain networks and keep computers running.
I have not
By Will LaTulippe
Tue, 02/03/2015 - 6:23pm
Radio station/music research/trivia host/rideshare driver. I've made it to 31 without working 9 to 5 in an office.
I'm not trying to dump on workers here, I'm trying to gauge how many workers are sitting in traffic for no good reason.
VPN
By cybah
Tue, 02/03/2015 - 6:23pm
And VPN is only good if it works and if your remote site you are VPN'ing into is up. Unlike my office who's ISP decided to do a router upgrade IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY which hosed routing tables, made our VPN server go down.
*shakes fist at Windstream*
Ask me how many IM's and calls I got between 12:30p and 3pm of "I can't connect to the VPN".. ugh.
State shut an I-93 exit
By adamg
Tue, 02/03/2015 - 5:34pm
Exit 24, to be exact, because there was no place downtown for the cars to go.
I've got a bad feeling about this
By Whurlz
Tue, 02/03/2015 - 6:08pm
The Spouse has an appointment at MGH on Thursday. We were there last Thursday, as well, in the Storrow-to-Cambridge-Street Gridlock from Hell, because circumstances made us think this would be a better option than commuter rail. HA!
I will be conducting healing prayers for the Fitchburg line for the next 36 hours. I'm agnostic, but also desperate.
state and congress
By anne
Tue, 02/03/2015 - 6:45pm
I've been sitting at this intersection for six light cycles. pretty sure I could walk to charlestown faster. (but I can't today because I have the chest cold of death)
What could we learn from other cold, northern cities?
By Ron Newman
Tue, 02/03/2015 - 8:08pm
Some other places routinely get the amount of snow and cold that we've had the past few weeks. Could we learn some lessons from Minneapolis-St Paul, Buffalo, Edmonton, Calgary, Toronto, Montreal, Quebec City, Oslo, Stockholm, Helsinki, St. Petersburg, or Moscow?
Pedestrian inter-building networks would be nice
By ckd
Tue, 02/03/2015 - 11:52pm
Minneapolis, St. Paul, Edmonton, Calgary, Toronto, Montreal, Stockholm, and Helsinki (as well as Chicago and Winnipeg, which you didn't mention) all have some amount of pedestrian interconnection between bulidings (either above or below street level, or in some cases both) covering major portions of their downtown and connecting to their rapid transit systems. We have the Westin/Copley Place/Prudential Center...and that's basically it.
The best thing to learn from other cold northern cities, such as
By mplo
Thu, 02/05/2015 - 3:54am
Buffalo, Detroit, Chicago, Minneapolis-St. Paul, etc., would be to invest in better snow-removal equipment and manpower, as well as more funding and manpower, not only for snow removal, but for our MBTA/public transportation system, instead of cutting funding for such things, and investing in weapons to make war on, invade and kill innocent people in other countries.
Do you mean Cold Northern
By anon
Thu, 02/05/2015 - 11:26am
Do you mean Cold Northern Cities with decling populations?
City, 1990 2013
Buffalo 328,117 258,959
Detroit 1,203,339 688,701
Chicago 2,783,726 2,718,782
Or they interconnected Cold Northern city?
Minneapolis 368,804 400,070
Saint Paul 272,338 294,873
~~~~
Or did you mean public transportation that are newer and smaller then Boston?
Like the Buffalo Metro Rail opened May 1985 and only has 13 stations?
Or the Detroit that a completely separate urban and suburban systems? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_in_met...
And has Man Walks 21 Miles to Commute Each Day Because of Detroit’s Awful Transit
http://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/02/03/man-walks-21...
Like Metro Transit (Minnesota) - averaging 267,700 established in 1967 ?
~~~~
It is a good question but we should be looking at NY, NJ and Chicago
http://www.apta.com/resources/statistics/Documents...
Kendall was completely
By anon
Tue, 02/03/2015 - 8:11pm
Kendall was completely gridlocked up when I left around 6. Heard some dude honking and cursing. Standard.
Red line (inbound from Kendall) was actually okay, fwiw. 17 minute wait for the next outbound train though, and Park St looked disastrous when we passed by.
Economic impact of our aging
By anon
Tue, 02/03/2015 - 9:09pm
Economic impact of our aging and underfunded public transit system willl be telling . We as a state should be investing as much updating/expanding public transit as we did in the big dig. People / businesses will eventually get fed up they will move to better equipped / wArmer climates. Forget the Olympics we need immediate investment and big ideas on regional transit that welcomes users ! And offers shelter from the elements. So sick of the politicking.
I was on the express bus to
By BY
Tue, 02/03/2015 - 10:06pm
I was on the express bus to Watertown at 3 PM. Downtown was a total shit show. That bus wasn't going express anywhere.
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