I just got back from Maine, where we had a little mini-reunion of the guys to whom I was closest in college. We had a great time, once we got there.
But.
The most logical route from here to Maine is up 395 in Connecticut, 290 to 495 in Massachusetts, then up 95 through New Hampshire and Maine. It is, save the Connecticut portion, the route from hell. On Saturday morning the exit from 290 to 495 was backed up for miles; we finally decided (using directions from my wife’s Iphone) to exit onto a back route and navigate around the backup. It basically took us about an hour to get back onto 495 and resume the trip. From there on, the traffic was merely constantly heavy all the way to Portland, where we left the interstate.
On the way back, the traffic was absolutely dreadful. The Maine Turnpike, or most of it, and 495 are both three lanes wide. Most of the time the cars in all three lanes were a few car lengths apart. It is always like that, especially on 495. I drove that road back when I was in college, and even then it was overcrowded. 395 in Connecticut is bliss by comparison.
This being the United States, there is no way to get to Maine, or virtually anywhere else in New England, other than by car. Amtrak covers the coast, but is far too costly; it only goes as far as Boston, and is inconvenient for everyone who doesn’t live along the coast. Building more highways is no solution-they just encourage more development along their path. To paraphrase a line from Field of Dreams, if you build it, it will get filled.
Now I’ll readily concede that the trip to Maine is particularly brutal. The trip to Vermont, which only nicks high density areas, is not that bad, unless your timing is off. If you want to get to Maine without totally frazzling yourself, you have to drive in the middle of the night, and that holds true for any trip that involves New England interstates. I-95 through Connecticut, and indeed, for its whole length until you get to Northern Maine, is always overcrowded.
We need speedy, reliable and cheap rail transit. Since we now own GM, maybe we can use all our new factories to manufacture the trains and cars, and all our newly unemployed stockbrokers to lay and maintain the track. I know it won’t happen; this country is imprisoned by a “can’t do” philosophy, which has been successfully propagated by a Republican party that preaches that the government should not do what needs to be done, and that private corporations shouldn’t have to. But, we can dream, can’t we?
Epilogue: This is totally irrelevant to the subject of this post, but here’s a few pictures of what makes the horrendous trip worth it. These are taken from the dock in South Freeport, where we went to the Harraseeket Lunch and Lobster for lunch.
