Circular Logic

One of the things I like about going to Martha's Vineyard is how little it changes from visit to visit. I haven't been here for a real visit in 6 years or so, but not only is the woman at the fish market the same woman I remember from last time, but she looks exactly the same too. The Saturday Farmer's market has the same vendors, the same preppy sweaters adorn the shops in town, and the weather still veers crazily between bright, clear and sunny and grey, windy and impossibly humid (bring a paperback book here and I dare you to keep the cover from curling up).

Another thing that never changes here is the news. I guess that's not entirely true because for the first 10 years I was here every headline was about the ferry and the financial problems of the quasi-public ferry company and the failings of the people running the company. That seems to have calmed down now, and it's rare to hear people complain about the ferries.

On the other hand, there is one thing that has remained front and center in the island's consciousness since I began visiting the early 80's: The intersection of Barnes Road and Vineyard Haven-Edgartown Road. All of the main towns on the island are in its northeastern corner, forming a wide, flat triangle. Vineyard Haven is to the west (or left on the map), Edgartown to the east (right) and Oak Bluffs central and a bit north (up). Vineyard Haven-Edgartown Road, as you might guess, crosses east and west between the two towns. It's a busy road, especially at a few peak times. Barnes Road goes north-south and is the only direct way to Oak Bluffs from the rest of the island.

The intersection between these two roads is probably the second busiest on the island. The busiest, called 5 Corners because 5 roads intersect there, needs a traffic officer there all day during the summer, but is in the middle of a bustling town (the famous Black Dog Bakery is on one of the 5 corners). The other intersection is in a relatively desolate area.

For many years, this intersection had a stop sign on Barnes Road and nothing on VH-Edgartown Road. This worked fine most of the time, most of the year, but at a few peak times during the summer, it could take up to a half hour to get across if you were trying to get to Oak Bluffs, and occasionally someone would make an ill-conceived attempt to cross and would perish in a fiery crash. Years of discussion ensued, which encompassed everything from doing nothing to putting in a (horrors!) traffic light, which would have been the first on the island, and concluded with putting a blinker with a yellow caution signal on VH-E Rd. and blinking red on Barnes Rd. This accomplished exactly nothing.

Mind you, the ongoing discussion was front page news in the local paper throughout this period, and over time I came to realize that there was a determined, well-connected constituency who wanted nothing more than ensuring that traffic at the corner remained intractable and would fight anything providing even a whiff of improvement. Eventually, they hit on making the intersection a 4-way stop. This seemed to please almost everyone, because it make the whole thing fairer, I suppose, and was cheap to implement.

Only two problems remained or one problem and a corollary. The core problem is that a 4-way stop, while excellent for making people slow down in relatively low volume locations, is a stupid solution for an intersection between two busy 40 mile per hour roads. It brings everyone to a halt and completely impedes traffic flow. That's where the fairness part I mentioned before comes in, instead of one road waiting 30 minutes and the other not waiting at all, now both roads had 20 minute waits because everyone had to stop. The corollary is that people don't have a clue how to behave at 4-way stops under the best of circumstances, and waiting 20 minutes to get to the stop sign wasn't exactly the best of circumstances. So we went from occasional horrific accidents to frequent minor accidents.

In any event, I was pleasantly surprised to see the following headline in the Vineyard paper: MVC will review roundabout project planned in Oak Bluffs. Yes, they have, for the past 10 years, been planning a traffic circle for the intersection. As awful as traffic circles can be, it's a good solution for this particular problem. Traffic will move quicker because not everyone has to stop, and there are supposedly half as many accidents as at a 4-way stop. The trouble is in the first part, as the Martha's Vineyard Commission (whoever they are) now wants to know why they weren't more involved in the planning process and the people who live near the intersection are opposed to the project because it would improve traffic flow. This, apparently will make it harder for them to get in and out of their driveways. And so it goes, round and round.