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Comment by ghaff | Hacker News Reader

>It's striking since overall traffic volume is down so much

That's interesting. Ex-urban Boston intersecting with a couple of small cities, I basically don't immediately see material differences relative to pre-pandemic. Maybe a little less traffic congestion on the major roads? But certainly not "much less." (Which I find a bit surprising given how relatively little I go out but that's what I see.)

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Pre-pandemic, there'd be 2-3 hour long periods with stop-and-go traffic inbound in the morning and outbound in the evening on Fresh Pond Parkway (2/3/16) in Cambridge.

I'd say that traffic is easily 30-50% of pre-pandemic levels now. Afternoon backups in front of my house are almost entirely gone and morning backups are quite a bit lighter and shorter.

Certainly the opening weeks of the pandemic, way back in late March of 2020, traffic was virtually nonexistent in my part of the USA; just outside of Portland in Oregon. And then traffic picked up just a tiny bit, but for months it was a cyclist's paradise; miles and miles of roadway open and very little traffic. For most of the summer it was an absolute delight. We're pretty much back to normal now.

I commute ~50mi into the Boston area daily. The volume is definitively down enough that the usual backup spots are no longer guaranteed backup spots except at the peak hour whereas before it was probable to hit a backup at those spots at any hour between 2pm and 6pm. My friends who ride the T say it is similar.

There was spectacularly little volume during the opening weeks of the lock-downs in March. It was like Tuesday volume becamee Saturday of a long weekend volume but without the downside of Saturday drivers generally driving slow because they're not commuters on those roads.

I wonder how much this is impacted by people avoiding the T like the plague?

I'm nowhere near the T. I'm about an hour west of Boston. And there's essentially no public transit out here. Based on looking at parking, commuter rail use looks extremely low but that shouldn't affect local traffic during the day that much (though some of it may admittedly be people who aren't otherwise in Boston offices).

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