Forest Hills this afternoon: The Gordian knot of Boston-area traffic

... was pretty disastrous during rush hour last night -- and again during rush hour this morning. Bus delays last night were over 20 minutes, and over 15 minutes this morning. No reason to think this won't be our new norm.

i usually drive or ride my bike through the Casey tear down area around noon, and again at about 8:30 PM. My ride in the past week and a half has been the best ever in my 15 years of making this commute.

The lights are timed more sensibly, there are fewer traffic-blocking turn options, there are more multiple lanes going where the cars want to go. My Waze has had to reset itself to cut minutes off my trip as I breezed from Shea Circle to a left turn down Washington St. without even having to stop once.

I know, it's not everyone's experience, but it is not all gloom and doom.

If people would just stop "blocking the box" and wait a bit, things would go much more smoothly (and not just here, everywhere that's there is traffic). Ticket the scofflaws for a couple of weeks and we'd see a dramatic change.

Before someone's tweet is taken for reporting they should be required to write clearly. What is Jessica talking about??

Forest Hills connects to the Centre Street rotary by the Arborway, not the Jamaica Way.

Meanwhile I breezed through the Centre Street rotary this morning at 7:15 am. There was so little traffic I thought there must be a school holiday.

Was a tad heavy but no different to normal.

I will be happy when things become more predictable.

But then again, I went through the area earlier (before 5) than I did yesterday (about 5:30.)

The morning commutes inbound on Washington Street seemed good both days, and I stupidly walked on Monday morning (and got passed by 6 buses, all between the gas station and Ukraine way, 3 buses for the 36 route.) There seemed to be some white collar woman noting traffic patterns. Monday afternoon seemed hellish- I walk home anyway, but the inbound traffic was backed up to Cibao Market and there was barely anything going outbound, including buses. There were 2 cops at Ukraine Way, but they were barely doing anything Monday. Today they were definitely doing something- I had to stop midway across the street to let Tower 10 respond to the call that had them stuck in traffic on the way back. Still, no differences in traffic flows this afternoon on Washington Street south.

I did drive the Arborway to Forest Hills tonight. The configuration is interesting. We saw the oddest thing. A car at the red light at the busway in the right lane suddenly put on it's left turn signal and started into traffic. A car with the green on South Street had to stop, but the car also stopped. When the light turned green, I was curious about whether a u-turn or illegal entrance to the busway was to occur, but the car just proceeded in the left lane to the turn. Weird.

Let's see what Wednesday brings. Remember, the Square is a 20 minute walk, and traffic engineers designed Forest Hills back in the early 80s.

every anon looks and sounds like every other anon on the interweb...

Went to the Casey team office hours last night. The traffic engineers said they were seeing slow incremental improvement in the eastbound p.m. rush-hour traffic just as they did with the westbound a.m. rush-hour traffic last week. Drivers (and peds and bike) confusion while getting used to the new configurations is one part of the problem. They have been constantly tweaking the light sequences to improve things - but believe it or not, that effort is somewhat undermined by Staties directing traffic against those lights or stopping some of it to hand out tickets to those who block boxes or run the lights.

Once they remove some of the overhead steel between South Street and the western abutment, they'll chew into the northerly portion of the hammerhead piers, then the N-S abutment retaining wall at the end of the bridge and relocate a water main underground there.... and THEN they can add a second lane between the Arboretum and South (not just the expanded queue area near the light that they have now). That should lead to more improvement.

sitting in our little cars crying and complaining until something REALLY evil happens.