Keller @ Large: Why The Mass Pike Doesn't Work

BOSTON (CBS) - Call me crazy, but yesterday afternoon at about four o'clock, of my own free will, I drove out on the Mass Pike to Framingham when I didn't need to.

Actually, it was for a story on the news about the Pike, and why it has become our very own highway of horror, a story prompted by the Weather Channel's selection of the Pike as the second worst holiday traffic bottleneck in the country. That's right, second worst, trailing only I-95 between New York and Washington, worse than the Beltway. Sure enough, right on cue, the Pike was crawling from the extension right out past 128.

Perhaps it will be wide open today - maybe everyone who left yesterday just guessed wrong. But I doubt it.

As regular Pike users can tell you, nightmarish traffic is no longer the exception there, it's the rule. When the Pike was built in the 1950s, it was touted as the answer to the obsolescence and inadequacy of the existing east-west routes, and if you've ever tried to get anywhere on Routes 9 or 20, you can understand how they felt.

But the fact is, a half-century later, it's the Pike that's obsolete. The road and its toll plazas cannot handle the volume of traffic they draw. The Fast Lane system designed to speed up the flow is neutered by the poor planning and design of the plazas where traffic backs up and blocks access to the fast lanes. And of course, the Turnpike mortgaged its own financial future by squandering billions on the Big Dig, a fiasco that has sent tolls and debt soaring and done little to ease most traffic bottlenecks.

When I stopped at the Framingham rest area and asked travellers what they thought of the Pike, the verdict was unanimous - they hate it.

What the public sector geniuses of the 50's saw as a panacea for our transportation problems has turned out to be a nightmare, just like the Big Dig.

Food for thought as you make your way out the Pike today; and unfortunately, chances are you'll have plenty of time to eat that food.

Listen to Jon Keller's commentary here:

You can listen to Keller At Large on WBZ News Radio every weekday at 7:55 a.m. and 12:25 p.m. You can also watch Jon on WBZ-TV News.