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Comment by davexunit | Hacker News Reader

I would love for MA to improve the Worcester-Framingham commuter rail line, too. The infrastructure feels so dated. The trains are slow, infrequent, and are late or broken too often, so I just drive in the terrible Boston traffic instead. I would love to take the train if I could. Even the fastest train from Worcester to Boston, a single express train, takes an hour. But most likely your schedule can't align with that train (I wouldn't get on at the terminal station so I can't ride it) so you have to take an even slower one.

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Heh, this pretty much summarizes it:

https://i.reddituploads.com/ed7d8ee6c6b84fe2b1ad51aab4e29588...

This image is fascinating, is there a source to it? Reverse google images sadly didn't turn anything up.

https://www.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/5qdq03/mbta_commute...

links to

https://twitter.com/jimhaddadin/status/824708694441132034

links to the underlying data source,

http://mbtabackontrack.com/performance/index.html#/download

And then you get into the city and have to take the T... My 4-mile Green Line trip from home to work takes anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half. The other lines aren't as bad, but the Green line is just shockingly terrible.

Depends on the branch, the D seems ok to me. It’s the only one that doesn’t share the road with cars, which is I think a large part of the problem with B and C. (Aside from the B having a stop every block).

I used to drive to the D line terminal station and take it to Copley Square and it was a pretty OK ride.

The Fitchburg line is even worse because you have to slog through the Concord rotary if you chose to drive. I'd love to see the face on one of my Californian friends driving on Route 2 -- nowhere else have I ever encountered a 55mph highway that ends at a stoplight.

I'm not sure what you mean by "ends" but there are parts of the Pacific Coast Highway (between Malibu and Santa Barbara) with 55 mph speed limits and stoplights.

Or Route 1 at least through Central New Jersey, 55 and stoplights all over.

Same in all of New York anywhere north of the city. It's very common.

What I mean is it's a 50-60 mile stretch of highway that unceremoniously stops at a traffic light with no highway on the other side. It's a very weird thing.

I don't mean to be contrarian but since there is a perfect counterexample near where I live...

https://goo.gl/maps/vfpo5KGRqhs

Breezewood, PA is pretty infamous: I-70 has a stoplight with US-30, where you turn right, go through a second stoplight, turn right again, and then get back on I-70. It and the I-78 approach to the Holland Tunnel are the only two places where the interstate has a traffic light, although the road is 35mph immediately in front of it in PA (I don't know what the speed limit of the NJ road is).

Freeways ending in stoplights are actually fairly common, although they usually have lots of advance warning saying "FREEWAY ENDS." 50mph and 55mph roads having stoplights on them aren't particularly uncommon, particularly in rural areas.

I70 joins I76 (the Pennsylvania turnpike) in Breezewood, so traffic would be slowed at the toll-booths even if a proper intersection was built. I suspect that there was some political wrangling that resulted in the US30 transition though - the truck-stops, restaurants and tourist-traps are loving it!

> 50mph and 55mph roads having stoplights on them aren't particularly uncommon, particularly in rural areas.

Sure, but this is a major artery connecting several residential hubs to the regional capital.

Georgia 400 is a limited access highway with a 65 mph speed limit that retains that speed limit after turning into a traffic light controlled motorway.

I hate to be pedantic, but that is not what a motorway is. It cannot, by definition, be traffic light controlled (except the on-ramps).

Take 55 south to Newport Beach during morning Rush hour.

There's a surprising number of UK A-roads that are 70mph up to a traffic light. There's usually a lot of signage warning you about it.

It wasn't that long ago that one of the main north-south roads in California had a stop light on it.

http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM9N2W_Last_Stop_Light_on...

Most of your Californian friends would need to pack extra underwear for the first few weeks of commuting in MA.

I would love for the powers that be to fix Route 2. The neighborhood roads in Concord and Acton are almost unusable at rush hour from Waze, etc. routing around Route 2. It has gotten progressively (and noticably) worse over the past three years.

They ended up having to redo the school bus schedules to accommodate the new traffic levels.

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