Tracking Bridge Traffic Over A Summer Weekend

Just for laughs, we summoned up Google Traffic every hour or so during peak commuting periods.

We struck during mid-summer, which is a peak period around here. We did it before the end of the month, so we spared ourselves the cottage monthly-rental crowd.

We chose a weekend without some major event like a Scallop Festival or the Pan Mass Challenge. We did, however, choose a scorcher of a weekend.

Overall, I'd say we got as easy of a weekend as we could ask for in the summer. We may do another version of this when the PMC is in town (early August), just to see how it compares.

Here's the volume:

Bourne Bridge
Year round daily average (2011) = 42,505 vehicles
Summer daily average = 58,467

Sagamore Bridge
Year round daily average = 51,489
Summer daily average = 70,674

Here's what we found this week. We had no way of counting cars, even though we did do a few drive-bys just to make sure that Google Maps wasn't fibbing.

Friday, 5 PM.... 1 mile backup heading on-Cape at the Bourne Bridge, 1.5 mile backup at the Sagamore.

Friday, 6 PM.... traffic flowing freely over Bourne, minor delays approaching and crossing Sagamore.

Friday, 7 PM-Midnight.....hardly any traffic at all


Saturday, 8 AM.... 1 mile backup at Bourne Bridge, 2 mile backup at the Sagamore Bridge. Accident reported on Route 3 South just before the Sagamore Bridge

Saturday, 9 AM,... Accident at Sagamore still there, traffic back 4 miles, well past Exit 2. Bourne Bridge has 2 mile backup.

Saturday, 9:30 AM... Sagamore delays still back 4 miles, Route 6 East jammed to Chase Road.

Saturday, 10 AM.... Sagamore accident cleared, traffic still back 4 miles, pushing 5. Route 6 East jammed almost to Meetinghouse Road. 2 mile backup at Bourne Bridge, Scenic Highway jammed. Cranberry Highway filling up in Buzzards Bay.

Saturday, 11 AM... Route 3 South jam approaching Exit 3, Route 6 still jammed to Meetinghouse Road, entire Scenic Highway is bumper-to-bumper heading towards Buzzards Bay. Bourne Bridge jam 3-4 miles back onto the mainland. Bounedale Road, which may have 10 houses on it, has several ominous red sections on Google Traffic.

Saturday, 1 PM.... 3 mile backup heading on Cape towards the Bourne Bridge, accident just reported, this delay may grow substantially. One of our scouts tells us that Rte 25 heading to the Bourne Bridge sems to be moving 25 feet a minute. Both the Scenic Highway and the Cranberry Highway have multiple accidents, and are bumper to bumper. Traffic already on the Cape has eased up, just a brief jam after the Quaker Meetinghouse Road area. Traffic easin g up slightly approaching the Sagamore from Plymouth, maybe 3.5 mile backup now instead of 4.

Saturday, 2-4 PM.... 3 mile backups at both bridges, multiple accidents. Both rotaries are jammed. t 4 PM, there had been at least a 3 mile backup at Sagamore for over 8 hours.

Saturday, 6 PM on.... accidents are cleared, traffic flowing smoothly over both bridges.


Sunday, 9 AM... minor delays crossing Sagamore, a mile of bumper-to-bumper on traffic on Route 6 leaving the Cape. The Belmont Circle rotary in Buzzards Bay s getting full, might be church-related.

Sunday, 10 AM.... All clear, other than Route 6 leaving the Cape. The traffic jam is back two miles now.

Sunday, 11 AM... Mile long backup at the Boune Bridge, heading on-Cape. Six mile backup leaving Cape Cod on Route 6. Scenic Highway jammed.

Sunday, noon... Scenic Highway cleared, but Sandwich Road bumper-to-bumper. Mile long backup at the Bourne Bridge, Route 6 leaving the Cape is backed up to Chase Road.

Sunday, 1 PM... Route 6 jammed to Quaker Meetinghouse Road, accident in effect, 6A now jammed back to the Stop & Shop, perhaps people trying to get around the accident. Mile length backup at Bourne. Sandwich Road heading towards Bourne Bridge jammed a mile back.

Sunday, 6 PM.... very little traffic, minor delays leaving the Cape at both bridges. Ungodly good beach day, could be heavy volume later.

Sunday, 7:30 PM... The Exodus.... Rte 6 jammed back to Exit 6. One mile backup at Bourne Bridge. Sandwich Road and 6A have pockets of heavier traffic. Bumper to bumper on 495 around the Middleboro rotary.

Sunday, 9 PM.... One mile backup approaching Bourne Bridge rotary, pockets of traffic on 28 in Falmouth, Yarmouth, Harwich and Chatham. Route 6 approaching Sagamore back to Route 149.

Sunday, 11 PM..... except for a small stretch of 28 in Harwich, all traffic on the Cape is moving unimpeded.


Monday AM.... no Monday traffic, a sure sign of a slow summer weekend

Naming Post-Secession Mainland Cape Cod

When the traffic gets bad enough and pols start talking about making residents pay tolls to cross a theoretical third bridge, people who live in the mainland areas of Bourne and Sandwich start getting angry. When that anger boils up enough, you even hear talk of secession.

"We lost any financial benefits from Cape traffic in 1985. Start our own town, demand financial concessions from Cape Cod for the traffic, and dump both bridges into the Canal if the Cape says no" is the general tone of secession talk.

I'm not going to support the "dump the bridges" talk, as it is terrorism and might kill someone. I'm also not here to push Secession. It's a fun conversation piece, and it might get me some site visits, but I'm simply not the man with the answers you'd need if you wanted to get the movement going. I'm not sure how it would be done, nor am I sure if it is even a good idea.

I'll leave those questions for a future article, most likely one written in August when I just took 90 minutes to get through the Belmont Circle rotary. Instead, I will take on something that I am completely capable of doing... naming the post-secession town.

We're going to work from a fictional scenario where Buzzards Bay, Bournedale, Sagamore Beach and Scusset Beach have all broken away from Bourne, Sandwich and perhaps even whatever parts of Wareham and Plymouth (why not go for everything east of Red Brook and all of the Great Herring Pond area?) we could get our hands on.

The resultant bow-tie shaped town would need many things, but the main thing it would need is a name. We've kicked around a few, and we'll share some of them with you now. There's no ranking, even if the staff have their own personal favorites.

- Gridlock

"Gridlock" would be a form of protest. It would speak of the new town's plight, while concurrently scaring away tourists who would otherwise clutter up our roads. It would be easy to remember, it would gain us amazing name-recognition value, and might invite investment.

"Gridock" was chosen from among several staff suggestions for traffic-related town names, edging out equally awesome but less serious contenders such as "Jam City, Massachusetts, " "Road Rage, Massachusetts," "Slow Lane, Massachusetts" and "Bumper-to-Bumper, Massachusetts."

"Bumper-to-Bumper" would have a sort of Stratford-upon-Avon sound to it, and would pair us with "Manchester-by-the-Sea" as the only town names in the state with hyphens in them. We'd also join them as the only town names with Prepositions in them.


- Ripton

"Ripton" was the name of a fictional Berkshires town that an awesome western Massachusetts pol (Editor's note: it was a UMass-Amherst professor) invented. He was able to apply for grants, and even got Ripton included in the state budget. He did Ripton's work so well, he was able to obtain state funds for the fictional community. He gave the money back, as he was less interested in Fraud and more interested in pointing out that the state government lacks Western Massachusetts awareness.

Anyhow, my financial adviser- who I will admit up front is in jail at the moment- tells me that he's "pretty sure" that state funds were collected and set aside for Ripton, and that if a Ripton should suddenly appear, they would be owed both the original sum of money and any interest accrued since Ripton's 1980s inclusion in the state budget.


- Capeside

Not a lot of TV shows were set on Cape Cod and the Islands (I can only think of one other one, Wings), but one of the best was Dawson's Creek. I don't think that I saw enough DC to tell you what it was actually about, but it launched the careers of Katie Holmes, James Van Der Beek, Michelle Williams and that other kid.

If you were a child of the 1990s and didn't arc a few to Katie Holmes... nice restraint, brother.

The "Capeside" town scenes in Dawson's Creek were actually filmed in Wilmington, North Carolina, and any Massachusetts scenery used in the show was filmed in Oak Bluffs. However, why not steal the name? As you can see from the entries above and below this one in the article, it's not like we have any better ideas.

"Capeside" edges out several other fictional town names that we wished to steal from TV, movies or literature, including "Amity," "Crabapple Cove," "Dunwich, "Wallencamp," "Peyton Place," "Gotham City," "Atlantis," "Jerusalem's Lot," "Dudleyville" and "Quahog."

- Wutham

Pronounced what-ham, it would be a goof on neighboring Wareham. We'd spell it "Whatham," but we wish to avoid GPS errors with Waltham.

We'd need Marion to change their name to Whoham in order to complete the trinity.


- Sagamore

"Sagamore" is probably the logical choice, although it would be complicated in that the actual village of Sagamore is on the Cape side of the Canal.

We might have to name the town "Scusset Beach," which would force us to  negotiate something with what would most likely be a very hostile Sandwich town government.

The "Scusset Beach" thing would be unfair to the Buzzards Bay part of the new town, while a "Buzzards Bay" naming would be unfair to Sagamore Beach.


Shark City

Assuming that we are unable to cut a concession for traffic from Cape Cod, and assuming that we lack the testicular fortitude to destroy the Canal bridges.... well, not all fights are physical.

If we can't take the physical means of going to Cape Cod away, why not attack them through tourism?

There would be no way of driving a car to Cape Cod without going past the NOW ENTERING SHARK CITY signs which we would dot the highway with. I'd even post the population on town signs, and cross it out every time someone died... you know, like they do in bad towns from cowboy movies.

Sure, most of those deaths would be Old Age, Cancer and so forth....  but you won't be thinking that when you drive past the Shark City sign.

Double Bay

One thing that this fictional town would have on every other town in the state would be the fact that we would be the only town to touch two (Buzzards Bay and Cape Cod Bay) bays.

If you count Buttermilk Bay, we could even be Triple Bay.

This one is here mostly because it would make a great Casino name. If we stole enough of Wareham's eastern and Plymouth's southern forests, we could build a mega-casino right off the highway.

Shoot, I'd leave the bridges up at that point. Who wants to go to Taunton or friggin' Everett when you can instead gamble all night in Double Bay, and then dip over to Cape Cod for some daylight beach time?

Bowtie

"Bowtie" would be a play on the shape of the new town. Yes, it sucks.

Keeping the theme, but changing the shape.... this (and the Casino) would be a big motivator for the Wareham and Pymouth land grabs. If we seize the Ponds sections of Wareham and Plymouth, we'd be shaped like a mini-Connecticut.

Squanto

"Squanto" beats out "Samoset," "Metacomet," and "Massasoit" for Algonquin tribute purposes.

Squanto has the best Q Rating, and would be the best tourist-drawing name.

I don't know how we could do it, but maybe Johnny Depp or the Farrelly Brothers could be convinced to re-invent Squanto as an action hero. Maybe he goes all Seagal on invading Mi'kmaq, or perhaps he even kills a Sasquatch that was menacing Priscilla Alden. Squanto's story is an amazing one, but it needs more kung-fu and dinosaurs if he's getting his own town

Have Any Better Ideas? Let us know in the Comments...

Death Row? Dividing The Scenic Highway...

The Scenic Highway in Bourne may be undergoing some major changes, according to Wicked Local Sandwich.

The Scenic Highway, as you know, is the 4.5 mile section of Route 6 that runs along the Cape Cod Canal between the Bourne Bridge and the Sagamore Bridge in mainland Bourne. It eventually becomes the Cranberry Highway, but that's Wareham's problem.

The Scenic Highway's problem is that it is undivided. The only things stopping you from using all four lanes to weave through summer traffic are Law and Imagination. The potential for head-on collisions is staggering. The downhill/northbound part just before the Herring Run rest area traffic lights might be the worst section of road on Cape Cod in a snowstorm.

Why, just yesterday, I saw a northbound fuel truck with 55000 gallons of gasoline pass within one nanometre of a southbound 18 wheeler truck entirely devoted to delivering Bic lighters to various liquor and convenience stores in the area. The potential explosion would have flattened Buzzards Bay and took down the Bourne Bridge. A nanometre is a unit of measurement equivalent to one billionth of a metre.

It's only a matter of time before we have some terrible accident like that, or one like the rejected-by-staff example where an unfortunate collision causes a truck full of liquid nitrogen to disgorge into a bus full of of church-picnic nuns and orphans. When the accident does happen, people are going to look back and ask "What could have been done to prevent this?"

One thing that we could do involves Jersey Barriers. Now, you should already know that a Jersey Barrier is not when a corpulent Governor puts a bunch of DPW trucks on the one bridge leading in to your town. No, these are modular concrete or plastic barriers used to divide traffic lanes.

Laying a line of these things down the Scenic Highway would vastly lower the chance of head-on crashes, the big killer of the Oops industry. The police, who have to clean these messes up, agree. When asked about the environmental impact of the Jersey Barriers, one Bourne cop told WLS to "paint it green."

Speaking of green, those barriers don't just sprout up on their own. Funding would be needed, not an easy thing to get these days. They're already talking about a permatax (in the form of a toll) on any third bridge project.

Patrick Ellis, a Sandwich selectman who has run a business in the area for years, also sits as the Upper Cape representative on the Metropolitan Planning Organization. He thinks that getting the project on the Transportation Improvement Program will open up the possibility of federal funding.

Granted, we still have to pay for federal funding stuff via taxes, but it's a much larger pool of "we" when we go national instead of local.

I'm not sure if we could get the fancy, HOV lane style of movable Jersey barriers. I'm not sure if they'd help at all, to be honest. Our worst traffic jams seem to be when the traffic is coming fro all directions, anyhow.

There would be a learning curve. People may also get a bit gun-shy when driving near barriers. Many people think that the prominent sidewalk is what slows down traffic on the bridges.

 Either way, you'll be hearing about the Jersey barrier idea again, and it may become a fact of life in the upcoming years.

Winter's Last Snow? Pictures And Snowfall Totals

Cedarville

MASSACHUSETTS

...BARNSTABLE COUNTY...
   BUZZARDS BAY           2.7   930 AM  3/21  SPOTTER              
   EAST SANDWICH          1.8   500 AM  3/21  NWS EMPLOYEE          
   EAST FALMOUTH          1.5   703 AM  3/21  NONE                  
   HYANNIS                1.5   730 AM  3/21  MEDIA                
   WOODS HOLE             1.0   600 AM  3/21  CO OP OBSERVER        
   CHATHAM                1.0   800 AM  3/21  CO OP OBSERVER        
   CENTERVILLE            1.0   600 AM  3/21  NONE                  
   SOUTH SAGAMORE         1.0   619 AM  3/21  HAM RADIO            
   FALMOUTH               0.5   725 AM  3/21  HAM RADIO          

Aimed At Sandwich

...BRISTOL COUNTY...
   REHOBOTH               3.9   905 AM  3/21  NWS EMPLOYEE          
   NORTON                 3.6   700 AM  3/21  CO OP OBSERVER        
   DIGHTON                3.5   928 AM  3/21  NWS EMPLOYEE          
   TAUNTON                3.5   700 AM  3/21  NWS OFFICE            
   SWANSEA                3.2   950 AM  3/21  SPOTTER              
   FALL RIVER             3.0   915 AM  3/21  NONE                  
   MANSFIELD              2.5   738 AM  3/21  TRAINED SPOTTER      
   NEW BEDFORD            2.0   511 AM  3/21  AMATEUR RADIO        
   ACUSHNET               1.8   620 AM  3/21  NONE                  
   NORTH ATLEBORO         1.7   840 AM  3/21  NONE                  
   FAIRHAVEN              1.5   625 AM  3/21  NONE                  
   WEST ACUSHNET          1.5   642 AM  3/21  HAM RADIO        

Plymouth, The White Cliffs... lol

 

...DUKES COUNTY...
   WEST TISBURY           1.3   629 AM  3/21  NONE                  
   EDGARTOWN              1.0   900 AM  3/21  CO OP OBSERVER    

Bournedale

...NORFOLK COUNTY...
   MILLIS                 4.5   900 AM  3/21  SPOTTER              
   DOVER                  4.0   815 AM  3/21  NONE                  
   BRAINTREE              4.0   522 AM  3/21  AMATEUR RADIO        
   FOXBORO                3.2   815 AM  3/21  NWS EMPLOYEE          
   MILTON                 3.2   830 AM  3/21  BLUE HILL OBSERVATORY
   SHARON                 3.0   839 AM  3/21  HAM RADIO            
   FRANKLIN               3.0   700 AM  3/21  CO OP OBSERVER        
   NORWOOD                2.7   736 AM  3/21  NWS EMPLOYEE          
   WALPOLE                2.6   737 AM  3/21  HAM RADIO            
   NORTH WEYMOUTH         2.5   638 AM  3/21  TRAINED SPOTTER      
   FOXBOROUGH             2.5   716 AM  3/21  HAM RADIO            
   RANDOLPH               2.5   545 AM  3/21  TRAINED SPOTTER      
   BROOKLINE              2.4   845 AM  3/21  HAM RADIO            
   WRENTHAM               2.2   811 AM  3/21  NONE                

Sagamore Heights

...PLYMOUTH COUNTY...
   WHITMAN                5.3   957 AM  3/21  TRAINED SPOTTER      
   HANOVER                5.0   534 AM  3/21  GENERAL PUBLIC        
   N. SCITUATE            4.8   657 AM  3/21  MEDIA                
   BRIDGEWATER            4.0   700 AM  3/21  CO OP OBSERVER        
   ROCKLAND               4.0   720 AM  3/21  SPOTTER              
   WAREHAM                4.0   933 AM  3/21  NONE                  
   HINGHAM                3.6   928 AM  3/21  NONE                  
   MIDDLEBORO             3.0   700 AM  3/21  CO OP OBSERVER        
   KINGSTON               2.5   731 AM  3/21  TRAINED SPOTTER      
   CATERVILLE             2.5   908 AM  3/21  NONE                  
   PLYMOUTH               2.0   524 AM  3/21  AMATEUR RADIO        
   DUXBURY                2.0   721 AM  3/21  HAM RADIO            
   WEST WAREHAM           2.0   745 AM  3/21  TRAINED SPOTTER      
   ROCHESTER              0.7   800 AM  3/21  CO OP OBSERVER        

Cape Cod Canal

I'm hardcore enough that I got in 18 holes today at White Cliffs. I also golfed.

Sammich

Scusset Beach jetty

Inland Cedarville

Spring's comin'....

Why Can't Southerners Drive In Snow?

Is It Really That Difficult?

(Editor's Note: This is from a 2014 article at a site we used to write for...)

Bourne had a bit of snow falling this morning, and it snowed through 10 AM or so. It was good for about 2-3", at least where I am in Sagamore. The schools in Bourne almost but didn't delay or cancel. The roads will be a bit slick, especially if they don't plow them. They may even not plow them, as towns sometimes choose to save Snow Removal funding for more serious events. This is no big deal. 3" or so, maybe 6" on the Islands. We golf in snow like that.

This same storm- granted, with a touch more intensity- just went through the South. Normally warm places like Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina are getting snow, ice, or both. These are regions of the country that generally don't get snow. Being able to build a snowman in Savannah, Georgia is almost as rare as being attacked by an alligator while swimming in Cape Cod Bay.

You can say that the Confederacy had a philosophical mindset about the snowfall only if you remember that Anarchy is a philosophy. Cars are frozen in place on the highways. Children are stranded in schools, or even- in Hotlanta- in a school bus by the roadside. The Governor is urging citizens to remain in their homes. The term "zombie movie" is used in a descriptive manner by CNN. The storm is being called "the Atlanta Snow Jam" by one newspaper, who have "unspeakably horrible commute" in their headlines. Atlanta had about 1000 motor vehicle accidents, and triple digit casualties.

Atlanta had 2.7" of snow.

There is a State Of Emergency in just about any state that once produced cotton in large quantities. It is a justified condition. In both southern/national headlines and my Facebook, I hear tales of 18 hour commutes, highway parking lots, shelters being opened, people missing or unaccounted for, airport delays, scared kids in buses, and general all-around chaos. The last time this region was so worried about getting someone out of a bus, it was Rosa Parks.

People with even a moderate interest in Weather History, or people who were living in Massachusetts in the 1970s, immediately think "Blizzard of '78" when they read the stories coming out of Alabama (the link leads to an article with "Aaaaughh!" in the headline). You hear the same tales of frozen highways, car-camping, old people freezing to death, pregnant women stranded in their homes, and what have you.

Now, the difference between the two regions in this case is that Atlanta has about 2 inches of snow, and Massachusetts got 2 feet of snow in the Blizzard of '78. Two feet and change, actually.

Before I discuss what I think causes these differences, I want it stated early in the article that the Dirty South are no punks. Most of the Civil War was the South slapping the North around, and the North only really won through attrition. If General Armistead charged a little harder at Gettysburg, you could pretty much look at the numbers and be like "a kid from Louisiana can beat two kids from New York, even if you give the Yankees all of the railroads and food." This snow chaos we have in South Carolina and the relative calm in Massachusetts is not a case where, as General Pickett once said, "I think the Yankees may have had something to do with it."

So, why does snow that a housewife on Monument Beach might not even notice cause such chaos in Mississippi?

We're going to focus on vehicles for starters, in a manner which can be concurrently positive, negative, and a perceived positive that actually works out to be a negative once you think on it a bit. When chaos is ensuing and you need to place blame, it is not a bad idea to think of something you may have been mistakenly confident about.

That's a snow plow. You don't need me to tell you that, because- when it snows- you see them all over Bourne. Someone from Louisiana might look at that same plow sort of like how you or I would look at an armadillo. You'd know what it is, but seeing one in action would be a first.

Plows, and their good friends Salt and Sand, are essential when trying to clear snow from a road. Sand and Salt either provide traction or they melt snow/reduce the temperature at which water freezes. The plows do the bull work of removing the piles of snow that build up.

If you like numbers as much as I do.... chew on these.

- Helsinki, which is in Finland, removes about 200,000 truckloads of snow from their streets in a harsh winter.

- Montreal, which gets 5-6 feet of snow per winter, spends $158 million on snow removal for a year.

- Boston, which has 850 miles of roadway, has over 500 "pieces" of snow removal equipment, and I don't think that they count shovels.

- Miami has never had accumulating snow, and has only had flurries a few times.

- Florida and Louisiana have an average annual snowfall of 0.0". Alabama and the Carolinas, which have mountains, get roughly 1.3" of snow per year.

- Massachusetts gets 43" of snow a year, a bit more inland, a bit less near the Cape.

- New York gets 123" of snow a year, less as you near NYC.

- After the "Great Snow of 1717," much of New England was buried under 25 foot drifts.

- The record snowfall in the US from one storm is 189 inches... in California, of all places. Mount Shasta, to be precise.

- Atlanta has roughly 2.7" of snow so far. Boston, which is nowhere near holding the national record, got 27.1" of snow in 24 hours during the Blizzard of '78. The effects on the people in each city were similar.

- South Carolina, which has some mountainous territory, gets .3 days of snowfall a year. That's about 8 hours, generally spread out over a dozen or two mountain weather events.

-  If you add up the average amount of hours it is snowing in Michigan in a year, snowfall fills 44 days.

- Finally.... Bourne, which has 20,000 people in the summer, has enough town plows and subcontractors out on the road that the girl at the Highway Department wouldn't even venture a guess when I called to ask how many plows Bourne had. From what I hear on the news, Atlanta, which has 5 million people in her metropolitan area, has 10 plows. They recently (yesterday) bought 12 plow blades, which they are going to attach to municipal vehicles.

Bourne has all of those plows because they NEED all of those plows. We'd look just as silly on the snowy roads as Alabamians (?) do if we didn't have plows out clearing the streets. Why doesn't Alabama have plows? The last heavy snow in Alabama was 1993's most-likely-aptly-named Storm Of The Century. They'd be fools if they bought and maintained 500 snow plows. The environment doesn't merit it. It's why people in Kansas don't have surfboards.

A bias exists, and it gets worse as you head North. People in Massachusetts laugh at people from Georgia when snow falls. People from New Hampshire laugh at how poorly Massachusetts flat-landers drive in snow. People in Canada laugh at people in New Hampshire. Eskimos laugh at Canadians, and Santa Claus thinks everyone South of him (at last count: all of us) are wussies.

But are there other factors for the Great Atlanta Snow-In?

I spent some time searching for Southern driving apologists on the Internet. You hear a lot of talk about snow tires and chains. While Massachusetts is snowy a little bit, I don't know anyone who uses chains on their tires. I'm sure that there are people in Alberta who don't know anyone who doesn't use chains.

There was also some discussion regarding the relative predominance of dirt roads in the South, with other people pointing out that some people from places like Mobile had never driven on anything but pavement (with the only variation ever being wet pavement). People who have lived in both climates (many northerners move south, and they dilute the "southerners can't drive in snow" argument as they multiply... our own Snowbirds are guilty of this, especially in the winter) say that dirt roads are actually better for snow, but become worse when the snow melts.

You also hear a lot of pickup truck talk. If you don't have a pickup truck in the South, you're kind of like a sissy. They're everywhere in the Confederacy, sort of like grits. Most of the problems lie in relation to the pickup having almost all of her weight in the front. This leads to those spinning crashes you see on The Weather Channel so often during Southern snowfall. Weather watchers call those the "F-360."

You hear NASCAR mentioned a lot, and it is important to the discussion. It comes down to interests vs environment.... nature vs nurture, if you will.

Southerners adore NASCAR. They follow it extensively, and being a fan of NASCAR means that even a dummy is going to pick up a lot of how-a-car-works knowledge. That should lead to how-a-car-performs knowledge, which should lead to a better, more educated driver. Throw in the better intersection behavior you see in Southern Hospitality culture and the Hurricane Belt earned-wisdom sense of "let's just work together and get through this storm," and you'd think the car-loving Southerners would do all right in storms.

All that is true, but it is somewhat offset by the fact that NASCAR is essentially Tailgating and Hostile Passing at 190 mph. "Driving well" in Daytona is "being 6 inches from someone's rear bumper on a turn." A little exchange of paint is almost like a Hello, especially among the veteran NASCAR drivers.

Of course, Southerners don't generally try to drive like their NASCAR heroes when commuting home from their office jobs in Savannah. However, what a Duxbury housewife thinks is tailgating might be different than what someone who roots for Dale Junior thinks tailgating is. When a Yankee with a brain in her head backs off someone on the highway in a snowstorm, the distance might be 100 yards. A serious NASCAR fan might view a proper distance as 20 yards.

The NASCAR expertise of the Southerner is offset by the snowy experience of the Civil War victors, even when the aggressive/possibly insane Boston driving style is figured into the equation. Pocasset people know to pump their brakes, and how to turn into a skid. We develop a sense of how to drive in different rates of snowfall. We look at a balding tire in October and think that we'd better change it soon with more foreboding than someone from Ole Miss does. Crikey, we're even a much better bet to have the little bear paw ice-scraper thing than an Auburn fan would be.

To be fair and honest, I think that, if people who are deep into NASCAR lived in more wintry climates, they would evolve to be better snow drivers than Cape Codders. But they don't, and they aren't.

In fact, looking at relative impact and using my old Civil War logic.... 2.7 inches of snow in a day hits Atlanta like 27.1 inches of snow hits Boston. Therefore, we drive about 10 times better in snow than one of those Roll Tide SOBs. This is a personal guess of mine, and I'm using a rubric that State Farm probably doesn't recognize. If the Civil War were fought by my rubric, the key to beating Bobbie Lee would have been to lure him into Maine.

In closing, I want to say that I have a lot of sympathy for our Red State cousins. They are getting a snow event that they can tell their grandchildren about. It is hitting a region where no one has a puffy coat, and where fireplaces- if they exist at all- are ornamental. The ice will take down power lines, so people used to Mississippi in the middle of a heat wave will instead have Jack Frost nipping at their noses. As I publish this at noon, there are kids in Georgia who still haven't gotten home from school yesterday.

And there, but for the grace of God, Jimmie Johnson, and the snow plow, goes You.

For Whom The Bridge Tolls: Thoughts On A New Cape Cod Canal Bridge

Let's start with some numbers:

Bourne Bridge
Year round daily average (2011) = 42,505 vehicles
Summer daily average = 58,467

Sagamore Bridge
Year round daily average = 51,489
Summer daily average = 70,674

Those numbers lead to impassable traffic jams, jams where ten mile drives take 3 hours.

You've all heard the war stories. "25 mile backups during Hurricane Bob," or "90 minutes from the the 6A/130 intersection to the Sagamore Bridge during the Mother's Day Massacre of 2012."

Bourne residents literally can't go anywhere and hope to come back on Friday afternoons, Saturday/Sunday mornings, Sunday nights, during the Monday commute, and/or during any holiday/event.

Emergency evacuation is impossible, property values suffer, the quality of life is lowered, and the last sentence of the previous paragraph is literally saying "as a Bourne resident, you sacrifice a sizable % of your waking life to traffic."

This would be tolerable in Boston, where there are a million people zipping about. It shouldn't be the case in Buzzards Bay, where 3000 souls can be found on any given day. It makes me want to scream at someone more than I care to admit.

Here's how I see it....

* We need a third bridge.

* We need a third road leading up to and away from that bridge.

* If we want it, we'll have to pay for it.

* We'll pay for it with a toll bridge.

* The tolls will be there forever, even after the bridge is paid off.

* Prices will increase as businesses pass the toll costs onto the consumers.

* We shall eventually pay billions for a $300 million bridge.

* Splitting traffic up at the Christmas Tree Shop and then merging it back together 400 yards across the Canal will not resolve our traffic problems. It may in fact make it worse.

* The bridge will not meet the stated goal of easing traffic volume at all, and it serves no other purpose.

* We'll pay for this useless bridge for the rest of our lives and the lives of our descendants.

* If we don't do something, this nightmare is imminent.

* It seems to have fallen to me to brainstorm something.

I'm not picking on MA State Rep. Randy Hunt or Cape Cod Commission CEO Wendy Northcross there. Randy is obviously putting thought and effort into the problem, and Wendy answered almost everything I asked her about the topic. They just don't seem to see the basic problems inherent in this situation, or they feel that the problems are tenable and/or unavoidable.

Pols are sort of bound by what they think they can sell in Washington or the State House. They know they will have to claw through miles of red tape to even get the idea mentioned. They know that there will be many hands reaching into our pockets once the project gets green-lighted, especially with a Massachusetts highway project.

All of that real world stuff gets them used to operating in a way that somehow prohibits Thinking Big.

The intricate solution is beyond my capabilities. If I showed any Urban Planning skill in high school, a series of guidance counselors failed to mention it to me. However, the basic philosophy on what we need to do is well within my skill set. You'll see it, too.

The toll will generate billions in revenue, without reducing traffic at all. It is almost punitive. Only someone with a financial stake in a road-construction industry or highway management can like the idea. Any politician who supports it should be chased through the streets by a mob of angry constituents, and perhaps be kicked in the ribs a bunch of times.

If we and our tourists are going to spend billions over the life of a toll bridge, we should at least get what we pay for.

50,000 cars a day times $5 a pop = $250,000 a day in toll revenue.

Let's lower the toll rate so that I can just say "a million a week" and "maybe $5 a car is a doomsday estimate" without stretching the truth too far.

300 weeks pays off the project. 300 weeks is like, uhm, 6 years or something.

But the toll will last forever.

Heck, we'll even throw in a decade or two to cover any/all maintenance costs, and a third decade to cover the eventual replace-the-old-Sagamore-Bridge costs. Over an assumed 100 year lifespan of the bridge, this still has the Man needlessly in your pocket for 65 years.

The only way for us to get any value out of this is if our project is so massive, it takes a century of tolls to pay for it.

Off the top of my head, I'd drop a third bridge right in the middle of the other two. I would gut Bournedale with roads connecting to Route 25 and Route 3, seizing Bournedale Road and Herring Pond Road by Eminent Domain if need be. I'd make the road into a big Y, with the bottom part of the Y being the third bridge.

I'd do an upside down version on the other side of the bridge, after taking some land from the gub'mint. The forks of the letter can sort of ^ towards Route 28 and Route 6 through the military base.

Shoot, why not build it in such a way that we can line it with Burger Kings, Cumberland Farms and Exxons? I have never met a local economy that couldn't use a rush of jobs. Perhaps even a Bournedale Mall would not be out of the question.

It would actually solve the problem that Main Street in Buzzards Bay has had since the freeway went in. Route 25 cut off our Tourist Flow, so we get back at Route 25 by cutting into it to run those same tourists by our businesses again. Main Street could slowly re-design itself to suit more immediate local needs, which it is sort of doing now anyhow.

There would be some ugliness to They Tore Down The Carter Beal Nature Preserve And Put Up A Gas Station With A Dunkin' Donuts In It, no doubt. We could mute the environmental damage by building an elaborate Arc de Triomphe bridge over the herring run in Bournedale.

I'd also go with a wrap-around fishing pier along the bottom of the bridges, and light all of the bridges up like they do with the Zakim Bridge. I'd celebrate the opening with a party so huge and chaotic, it would make V-J Day look like someone just won a Scrabble game.

It's being paid for... why not?

Hold on, someone did the map better than I did.

In my world of the future, we now have a third bridge. It is fed by roads which break off from highways which are already in place. The roads break off at the exact points (the Ingersoll Bend and Herring Pond Road) where we currently begin our present bumper-to-bumper congestion. We strike at the areas with the lowest population densities, mostly swamp and wasteland. Anyone we displace is compensated handsomely.

Locals can still use Main Street, Sandwich Road, the Cranberry Highway, the Scenic Highway and 6A for local-type stuff, which leads us to the best part. Before I get to that best part, I'd like to add that this plan would probably allow us to get rid of the two Bourne Bridge rotaries, and just have intersections like normal towns do.

The best part? The third bridge would be almost 100% Tourist. The current bridges feed the Bourne villages, while this hypothetical third bridge would empty into a discontinued military base and some Bournedale swampland. It would be of little use to locals, and it would only be used by tourists.

And it is this bridge that would bear the dreaded Toll. Holler if you hear me.

Now we have the burden where it should be. Tourists can pay for their own bridge. Smarter hotels and tourist destinations can comp guests for the toll. Bourne residents have suffered for years to fill Harwich restaurants with tourists, so cry me a river, Mooncussers.

Bourne and perhaps Sandwich residents will be exempt from any tolls, of course. We've been tolled in Traffic Patience for the last 100 years. F*** you.

The toll bridge can also be used by the rich man to skip heavier traffic at the free bridges via a small shedding of excess wealth, as the new bridge would sport a very low traffic volume for most of the week.  A five dollar toll for an empty bridge may also be an acceptable and necessary luxury to a working stiff who is running late for work on an important day.

We may have to somehow divert traffic to the toll bridge on certain Touristy days while preserving the free bridges for local traffic, and perhaps even invest in some of that Urban Warfare stuff that the cops get in larger cities where the people riot a lot. Maybe we can borrow some tanks from the military base.

We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, if you'll pardon the pun.

Surf Check, Round 2

For the second straight day, we set out to give you some surf reports. This is from Duxbury Beach.

Media Savvy Sky Rat

You just knew we were gonna hit 'Murica's Hometown, folks.

If I lived there, I'd have the Lobster Pound just zip-line me my supper every day.

Rough-but-ultimately-unimpressive surf, Duxbury Beach

Lobster Pound, Manomet Point, Plymouth MA

White Horse Beach, Flag Rock

Care to venture a guess which pictures in this article were shot on Jessica's phone, and which were shot on my $27 Wal-Mart cheapo camera?

Under the boardwalk, there's lots of water..... Sandwich, MA

Rotten camera ruins a nice shot from Scusset Beach, MA

The author, cavorting...

Plymouth's lobsetermen were taking no chances.

This guy was psyching himself up to jump the Sandwich boardwalk, but he didn't get it done while I was watching.

You'll get various opinions on fishing during storms, but this guy was at least putting his theories to practice in the Cape Cod Canal

Strong winds in effect for a few days, which means that we'll be out there tomorrow, as well.

CCM knows not fear, and runs only for the exercise.

Rotten shot, but this was as far East as I went... Sandwich, MA