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Don't you just hate it when your zipper gets stuck?

Brian D'Amico reports mechanical problems meant the HOV zipper lane on the Expressway was still set for northbound traffic this afternoon when it should have been set for the southbound rush out of the city.

To help alleviate the impending nightmare, MassDOT is opening the HOV lane to all traffic through 7 p.m.

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Comments

Opening the HOV lane does NOT alleviate traffic congestion.

That is, if you measure flow properly in terms of "people" transported rather than "vehicles" transported. Remember: the whole point of our transportation system is supposed to be to move people and goods, not just vehicles. HOV lanes are much more efficient at moving people.

MassDOT is just unbelievably clueless about this. It's back to the 1950s traffic engineering, every chance they get.

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in the "northbound" configuration (as the posting seems to imply), that means there were only three general purpose lanes (instead of the usual four) available on I-93 south for the PM rush.

If this is indeed the case, opening the HOV lane to all traffic was a very logical thing to do. Unless you'd rather see the traffic on I-93 south back up all the way to Concord, New Hampshire.

A funny thing though. Was listening to the traffic reports earlier (between 4 and 4:30), and they didn't say word one about any problem with the zipper lane (MassDOT's tweets started about 3:00). But I guess the concert at Gillette Stadium and the endless car insurance plugs were more important to them.

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For someone with "road" in their name, you seem to understand very little about roads and capacity.

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If you use the improperly deployed zipper lane for HOVs, you have one less lane than normal available for the majority of southbound traffic on the Expressway. This will cause the traffic to back up into and beyond the O'Neill Tunnel.

However, if you forgo the "requirements" of the HOVs for one afternoon, and open the lane to all traffic, recognizing that this is an emergency situation, you can minimize those backups, with the result that all traffic leaving the City moves faster.

Now, what were you saying about me not understanding roads and capacity.

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Yeah, clearly someone didn't read the actual content of the post. I imagine you just read the bit about the HOV being open to all traffic, lost it, and went into the uninformed asinine rant we read here

And before you accuse me of some shit, I don't drive and I'm not one of those fucking car gearhead assholes

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Is it the frank, or the beans?

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