Health & Fitness
Are Our Streets Getting Smaller?
Traveling through town, we're more often than not faced with one-lane travel due to the vast number of oversized vehicles in town.
Driving down Atlantic Avenue, it’s a common occurrence to have to stop and wait for an oncoming vehicle to pass before you can proceed in your lane. Forget about heading into Old Town, where, on a weekend, it’s nearly impossible to make it to Crosby’s without at least one stop, or worse, during winter months, where most of downtown is essentially a one-lane road.
As it happens to me several times each week, I was wondering whether our streets were getting smaller or the vehicles are just so much larger that it’s beginning to regularly impede the normal flow of traffic. Aside from clogging our streets, SUVs also present additional challenges in a small town including decreased visibility for drivers, pedestrians and bikers/skaters.
And then, of course, there are the many environmental detriments. Further, are they necessary or have we just become a society accustomed, for one reason or another, to driving large, over-sized, gas guzzling vehicles. Today, it seems as though nearly every other vehicle – or even more in Marblehead – is a SUV or truck. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that sales of SUVs nearly quadrupled from 1980 to 2007. In 1970, they represented just five percent of the total vehicles on the road, while now they exceed 25 percent nationwide, and I think the percentage in Marblehead is more like 50 to 60 percent.
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I write about this, but I am not without guilt, myself driving a mid-sized SUV. I have no children and my dog is small, but I feel the need for an oversized vehicle because of safety, winter navigation and overall convenience. Admittedly, I felt better when I downsized last year from a super sized version to one that is more reasonable, and gets better gas mileage, but it’s still not really a necessity for me or for my life.
For some, it may be status or comfort, for others, it is out of need, but, in a town the size of Marblehead, will we eventually have to widen our roads to accommodate the pressing influence of larger vehicles, or will traffic continue to come to a halt when we find SUVs parked on opposite sides of the street, reducing the travel lane down to one?
