Burlington Police Address Issue of Heavy Traffic

The unprecedented snow has left many commuters dealing with heavy traffic. From the state’s transportation system having major issues following the storms, to drivers day after day dealing with heavy traffic all around the area, everyone is feeling it.

Thursday night the Burlington Police Department issued a statement on its Facebook page answering the question of recent traffic volume in town. Here’s what they had to say:

The unprecedented and record setting amount of snow has left us with a greatly reduced road surface. There is not enough road for all of the cars. We have also lost entire turning lanes which traps cars in long lines at intersections.

This has a cascading effect as fewer cars can go through each light cycle. In addition, the high snow banks are forcing people to be more cautious at every driveway, intersection and turn, causing more backup.

Finally in this perfect storm of traffic delaying factors we have had so many days of unsafe travel and so many days of anticipated unsafe travel that more people are out driving in the windows of opportunity when they can, which adds even more volume.

Sadly, we don’t see much improvement coming for quite some time. Burlington sees the highest increase in daytime population in the entire state. Our night time population is approximately 25,000 within only 11.8 square miles. During the day we see over a 92% increase in population with workers alone. In addition we get Lahey Clinic patients and shoppers at all of our retail locations.

Burlington is a great destination but the snow has greatly reduced the ability of our infrastructure to handle traffic volume.