I-90 Questions (Boston, Chicopee, Pittsfield: to rent, houses, college)

[Bypass10]

I driven this route many times from CT to Boston and had a few observations/questions


1) Why is it compared to other major interstates going through metro areas the Mass Pike
-Does not seem to have any urbanization until much closer (inside 128) to the central city...Boston?
-It seems that as soon as you pass 128...it looks pretty empty...whereas if you drive on the NJ turnpike...it doesn't drop in development until you get 30 + miles out.
-Heck...going I-95 through NY it is way built up until past New Haven...even I-84 in the Hartford is built up for about 15 miles.
-Why is it that the Mass Pike..a major route for the 5th biggest metro area....doesn't have that same appearance?
-Is this just deceiving/due to the hilly landscape and towns being wealtheir?

2) Why are there so few exits on the Mass Pike?
How do people in metro west get to and from the city with so few exits...do they have take route 20/9....small roads for a long time?

3) Is it me...or does the Mass Pike have very good traffic for a metro road? It seems to be a lot smoother going into town than most other roads to Boston or other metro areas.

[wheelz]

It is just you, I travel the Pike every day and it is a freakin' nightmare! I hate the Mass Pike with a passion and not just because of the traffic! Why are we paying for uniforms for those parasites taking our hard earned money? The head of the MA Pike should go to jail for what he did to the people traveling during Easter weekend! Also, if we as a nation are so concerned about global warming, why do they have tolls there to stop all the cars and make them idle for an hour and a half for a 30 minute commute? They are trying to FORCE people to get the stupid Transponders! Well, what about the people that have them already? FAstlane my arse! They purposely don't open the cash lanes, they even went so far as to film a stupid scene for a Mel Gibson movie during rush hour traffic! The tolls should be torn down along with the entire Mass Pike Authority! I make it a point to tell the collector,. "Hey, tell your supervisor he SUCKS!"

[ogre]

Interesting questions. I'm not an authority, and have not done research on this, so consider that I'm answering your questions based on casual observation, and general knowledge of the area, and take my thoughts on this with a fitting number of grains of salt.

1) It seems that historically, the largest concentration of population in New England has been along the coasts. This seems to hold true in the Boston area, with more population density spreading well to the north and south of the city than to the west. Historically, the coastal towns were prosperous seaports, while the towns west of Boston were small farming towns until suburbanization began to appear in the area. Even though suburbanization has increased the MetroWest population, the towns along the coasts have grown too, and they had quite a head start on population, so northern and southern 'burbs are still more heavily populated.

You also mentioned the distance from NYC where you still see dense setttlement. Even though Boston has the fifth largest CSA in the U.S., and the tenth largest metro area if you go by MSA, which probably gives you a better picture of the local population, NYC is still a much larger city, so it stands to reason that its suburbs would spread over a wider area. Also, there's that history of dense settlement on the coasts again. I-95 in CT passes close to the coast, through areas that had already been fairly densely settled even before suburanization defined southwestern CT.

2) If you're talking about how widely spaced the exits are in the western suburbs, well, yes, people do often travel a pretty good distance on local roads to get to the nearest Pike entrance. My guess--and it's only a guess--is that this may have to do once again with the relatively low population density west of Boston. The population was even lower back fifty years ago when the Turnpike was built. The design probably reflects the level of use at the time the road was built.

3) While the roads toward Boston from the west have plenty of traffic, it's true that the Turnpike does seem to avoid the extremely heavy traffic on main roads in many major cities. Again I'm going to guess that this has to do with the settlement patterns in the metro area, with greater population, spreading out farther from the city, north and south of Boston than to the west. The roads going in from the north and south have had notoriously heavy traffic for decades. In fact, improving the flow of north-south traffic was a primary reason for building the Big Dig.

[goyguy]

Part of what defines a "turnpike" is the low number of interchanges. That was done to help create the illusion of getting someplace faster, even though expressways outside of cities were still unheard of at the time. Exit numbering is fairly recent on the Interstates, but turnpikes always had it - just from 1 to 22 or whatever instead of being based on distance from the end of the road or the state line.
On the rare occasions that I have to rent wheels and drive somewhere, I always like the Pike the best out of all expressways around here. Even the rush-hour backups still move, maybe at 5-10 MPH but they still move lol.
"MetroWest" along 90 does give the impression of being "wide open spaces," and that IS mostly because of "snob zoning." Lot sizes in many of the bordering towns like Weston were mandated to be no less than two (if not five) acres, so the effect is of seeing a lot more trees and open land than houses. Then of course once the highway was built, no one wanted to start a subdivision right next to it.
The Mass. Pike was constructed in the '50s from the Berkshires to 128, then extended downtown in the '60s, all supposedly with the intention of the tolls' being done away with once it "paid for itself." (The route in Connecticut followed by I-95 and then 395 was once the Connecticut Turnpike - but the state made good on dropping the tolls after the bonds were settled.) It's a sore spot for a lot of people, as you've been shown already in this thread. The cost-overrun-plagued "Big Dig" is only the latest excuse for still charging people to use the road.

[ogre]

Good posts by Wheelz and GoyGuy. Even though one says the traffic on the Pike is bad, and the other says it's not so bad, and the OP's experience seems to be that Mass. Pike traffic has not been bad at all, these seemingly contradictory experiences are all true, based on my observations. Outside of rush hours, the traffic on the Pike usually moves pretty well, which is where you find that it's different from many major-city main roads. During rush hours, though, there is plenty of traffic. The difference between rush hours and off-peak leads me to wonder whether the OP's experience on the Pike has been during off-peak times. As Wheelz observes, traffic can get really bad during rush hours, but GoyGuy's observation also holds true, because much of the time it's not as bad as the standstill traffic on some of the other local arteries. Except that there are times when Pike traffic does stand still. That just does not happen as often as it does on some of the other local roads. And the really bad traffic used to happen less often on the Pike years ago.

[scarletfire]

I agree with Wheelz that a) the traffic on the Pike can be horrendous at times and b) the tolls should go! It's just insane to create traffic jams, cause people to zip back and forth across lanes and cause potential accidents, and add more smog to the city just to collect a dollar or two from each car. And you're right they absolutely make it difficult if you pay cash. Absolutely maddening. Even if they did need the money to continually maintain the roads it could be paid in our taxes instead of this ridiculously inefficient system. I guess I could understand the "those who use it should pay" idea if we did that with everything we paid taxes for but since we don't it just seems ridiculous. I don't mind paying, I mind being asked to wait in line numerous times a day to do so.

The tolls should go.

[western mass and love it]

there are tolls on the pike? just kidding

[7 Wishes]

I used to visit Boston a LOT from metro NY in the early 90s (lots of college friends ended up there after graduation, was pursuing potential long-distance romantic relationship that never quite happened, etc.) and I used to notice this too (for example, I saw a farm just before hitting 128 on the Pike, didn't think at the time I'd see that that close to a "big city" like Boston).

But here's the thing I've learned, really, as noted before, as a metro only L.A. even comes remotely close to NYC and environs in sheer population, so the only other places I've seen in the US that really sprawl to the degree of metro NY into CT are LA (mostly because it's population is at a lower density) and Chicago (mainly because the lake means there's only 2-3 directions it can sprawl out into). So it's not so abnormal. (And not a knock on Boston either, almost moved there back in '90 and definitely would've if things had gotten serious with the girl I mention above.....now I haven't visited in over a decade, though I did have a job interview there last month).

Oh by the way, though CT would've probably removed the tolls a year or two later, what prompted them to do it pronto in the early 80s was a big truck accident/explosion at the I-95 toll plaza in Stratford that killed people and melted part of the toll facility.

[westernmass101]

Originally Posted by Bypass10

I driven this route many times from CT to Boston and had a few observations/questions


1) Why is it compared to other major interstates going through metro areas the Mass Pike
-Does not seem to have any urbanization until much closer (inside 128) to the central city...Boston?
-It seems that as soon as you pass 128...it looks pretty empty...whereas if you drive on the NJ turnpike...it doesn't drop in development until you get 30 + miles out.
-Heck...going I-95 through NY it is way built up until past New Haven...even I-84 in the Hartford is built up for about 15 miles.
-Why is it that the Mass Pike..a major route for the 5th biggest metro area....doesn't have that same appearance?
-Is this just deceiving/due to the hilly landscape and towns being wealtheir?

2) Why are there so few exits on the Mass Pike?
How do people in metro west get to and from the city with so few exits...do they have take route 20/9....small roads for a long time?

3) Is it me...or does the Mass Pike have very good traffic for a metro road? It seems to be a lot smoother going into town than most other roads to Boston or other metro areas.

1.) It's all mostly based on politics. When they were developing the Mass Pike they wanted to use it as a revitalization tool to attract investment into industrial cities. The other half is based on geography. The Mass Pike does surpass many urbanized areas other than Boston; what about Chicopee, and nearby Holyoke. Those cities were the most prosperous industrial towns in Massachusetts. The geographical landscape of Massachusetts, especially Western Mass. is mostly hilly terrain and mountain ranges. It was more cost effective to build on the current route than in other areas, which could of raised the spending on building the route.

2.) No one really knows why in the Western (Berkshires) they only have one exit (Lee, MA). Maybe because most of these towns/ villages are mostly agriculture, rural, and possibly a low population. Lee, MA deserved an exit because the Lee Outlets was/is built in Lee.

3.) The Mass Pike was rated one of the more safer routes and up kept route in the country. The traffic is not as bad because the more west you go the less urban it is. Bostons portion of the pike is hell.....

[western mass and love it]

the LEE exit was put in not for the shopping mall,but for the city of Pittsfield and it is also the last exit in Massachusetts. also the Pike i believe was built starting out west to east,but i cold be wrong on that one