I decided to forego any politics today as it’s been a great day and I have no wish to “harsh my mellow” (or anyone else’s) for the most part. That doesn’t mean I won’t complain, bitch, and moan about one subject or another as goodness knows there are plenty of topics to choose from.
Today’s target...er...topic is traffic.
No, I am not talking about the traffic coming to Weekend Pundit. It seems to be fine, though it comes nowhere near matching Instapundit. (Frankly, I wouldn’t want it to because at that point posting becomes a job rather than something I like to do.)
I am, of course, talking about the traffic we see on the roads, streets, and highways. At first I thought it was just me, but it seems to be a lot heavier this summer than any other I recall, and not just here in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire. We all expect traffic to be heavier on the weekends, usually starting sometime Friday afternoon and dropping of starting Sunday afternoon.
But the levels I’ve been seeing over the past couple of months have gone beyond what I remember from pre-Covid days.
The older of the WP Sisters and her boyfriend came up from their home just outside Worcester yesterday (Friday), departing at noon for the approximately 90 minute trip up here to The Gulch. It took them over 4 hours to get here. From the time they got on I-495 to the time they got off of I-93 in Concord, NH it was bumper to bumper. No accidents, no construction, and no traffic enforcement seen seen along the entire trip, yet traffic was moving slowly. It can see if this had been a holiday weekend as folks would get an early start, but this wasn’t one of those. There weren’t any really big events taking place like a NASCAR race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon. It was just a typical summer weekend.
I noticed heavier than usual traffic this morning as I made my way to our local Walmart at 7:30 to take care of my share of the weekly grocery shopping. The trip between The Gulch and Walmart takes less than 10 minutes if I hit the three sets of traffic lights between here and there just right. It took me almost 20 minutes. Ironically the parking lot at Walmart didn’t have nearly as many vehicles I expected to see early on a Saturday morning and I was able to get in and out in less than 20 minutes. In that 20 minutes the traffic had become heavier, but it still took me about 20 minutes to make it back to The Gulch.
A couple of hours later my sister’s boyfriend and I made a dump run and found the traffic was even heavier and slower. We dropped off the recyclables and trash and looked through the pile of old street signs that were collecting outside the rear of the recycling building, and then headed home. I took a different route back to The Gulch which cut a couple of minutes off our return trip.
Not too long after lunch my sister and her beau headed home, the return trip taking a little longer than the usual 90 minutes, but they hadn’t hit heavy traffic on their southbound trip. However, they did see that northbound traffic was bumper to bumper just as it had been on their trip up. It looks like a lot of people were leaving Massachusetts and heading to New Hampshire and Vermont. (One route into Vermont from the greater Boston area takes folks through New Hampshire to I-89 which goes into Vermont.)
The heavy traffic may also explain the higher than average number of traffic accidents and fatalities we’ve been experiencing.
I have noticed that traffic even during the week seems to be heavier than normal though I haven’t checked with friends at the NH Department of Transportation to find out what the traffic volumes have been over the past few weeks.
In the mean time I will stick to the back roads and byways as much as possible to get where I need to go without having to deal with the heavy traffic on the main roads and highways.
