TRAFFIC TROUBLES HAMPER THE HUB
Advocates say gridlock is bad for Boston’s business
Transportation experts warn that the economy is restrained and businesses are being driven away by traffic, which has gotten so bad it is reducing people’s access to jobs.
“We are already well past the point of companies making decisions not to locate here because of traffic congestion, and it’s not just the Amazons of the world, it’s the smaller- to mid-sized companies looking to expand,” Chris Dempsey of Transportation for Massachusetts said. “It holds back our economy from its full potential.”
A MassDOT Congestion Report released Thursday found that the traffic has gotten so much worse from 2013 to 2018 that it is actually reducing people’s ability to get jobs by making it harder to travel and reach places in a reasonable amount of time.
Access to jobs is at its worst at 8 a.m., when potential workers living in almost all communities between Interstate 495 and Route 128 lose easy access to up to 1.25 million jobs within a reasonable time period, which the report defines as within
45 minutes.
“They aren’t going to take a job that is going to require them to drive two hours every day,” Dempsey explained. “People have a limit for how much they can take.”
Transportation experts warn that companies and workers might leave if something isn’t done. If the traffic issue worsens, Jarred Johnson, chief operating officer of Transit Matters, said, “Companies are going to move to other places that are thinking much more seriously about the transportation than we are. We have to realize in today’s world, we’re not just competing with places down the road. This is a global economy. It’s absolutely impacting businesses.”
Johnson cited a Mass INC poll from April that shows half of workers with more than 45-minute commutes considered changing jobs and 30% have considered leaving the area altogether. That impacts retention, recruitment and productivity, Johnson argued, adding that he has even heard of companies pushing their morning meetings back from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. as a result of the Red Line derailment earlier this summer.
Lizzi Weyant, director of government affairs at the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, said, “The fact that people are thinking about leaving the metro-Boston area — about uprooting their entire lives because the congestion is so bad — that leaves me with no question that it’s something that we have to do something about.”
Weyant has been hearing from businesses about this problem since she began her career in transportation advocacy a little over decade ago.
“In a time when the economy is good I think that’s really scary to a lot of employers because it is, in fact, more affordable to pick up and move to another metro-region,” Weyant said. “If you can live close to your job and make a living with the good economy, and unemployment across the country is relatively low, that attractive option becomes even more attractive.”
Data collected for a study titled “National Accessibility Evaluation,” being led by the Minnesota Department of Transportation, shows that congestion is now reducing access to jobs in Greater Boston, particularly within I-495: as of 2017, the Boston region ranked sixth of all U.S. metro areas in terms of the loss of access to jobs due to traffic congestion.