My Earthfest Pet Peeve

By Steve Poftak
May 28th, 2009

Earthfest is this Saturday on the Esplanade. If past practice is any guide, DCR will once again allow folks to park along Storrow Drive, creating a massive traffic jam that can easily stretch all the way up the Leverett Connector onto I-93.

So, the convenience of a few hundred folks wins out over the thousands who use that road (average daily (probably weekday) traffic volume of 66,000, as of 2006).

In the past, DCR has claimed that the cars act as a safety barrier, but I’m skeptical of that explanation.

My two questions:

1) Is deliberately congesting a road and putting tens of thousands into stop and go traffic really making a great “Earthfest” point?

2) If DCR was more interested in their transportation mission and held to meaningful performance benchmarks, would they still let people park on Storrow Drive?