Driving tomorrow? Thoughts and prayers.
Plus: ❄️ Boston’s odds of a white Christmas
It’s Wednesday, Boston.
🚇 Don’t swipe on Gov. Maura Healey’s recent IG post unless you want a massive jumpscare. It got us pretty good yesterday.
👀What’s on tap today:
- A red card for BOSNation’s stadium
- Boston’s ugliest building is here to stay
- Our odds of a white Christmas
Up first…
12 DAYS OF B-SIDE
Your holiday traffic report
Image: Steven Senne/Associated Press. Illustration: Gia Orsino.
On the 10th day of B-Side the newsletter gave to me: Holiday traffic warnings, tips for surviving family drama, holiday good news, five delish hot chocolates, Phillip Eng’s Spotify Wrapped, volunteer opportunities(!) … tips for Boston winters, one pop-up review, local gift recs, and a Boston holiday tree. 🎶
If you thought 79.9 million people traveling over 50 miles from home at Thanksgiving was bad, just wait ‘til we tell you about the 119.3 million who are planning on it over the holidays.
🧳 This window caps off a year of record-breaking travel. “We forecasted record-breaking numbers over Thanksgiving, Independence Day, Memorial Day,” said Mark Schieldrop, a spokesperson from AAA Northeast, and “that trend is gonna continue [over the holidays].” That 119.3 million figure is up 3 million over last year and up 64,000 over 2019. Why? Schieldrop said everything from inflation cooling down to lower gas prices are contributing to the rise.
🚗 Per usual, most of the traffic will be on the road. Namely, 107 million of those 119.3 million travelers. Because Christmas falls on a Wednesday and manyfolks’ schedules are flexible thanks to WFH, travel will be spread out across almost two weeks (from Dec. 20 to Jan. 2). So expect lower peaks, but higher overall volume. That said, we can expect some particularly grizzly traffic on Thursday, Dec. 19, Friday, Dec. 20, and Monday, Dec. 23, thanks to holiday traffic mixing with regular commuters.
😤 The worst times to hit the road? As a general rule of thumb, “the worst times on the roadway, regardless of the day … are gonna be between about 1 and 8 p.m.,” according to Schieldrop. His advice is to get on the road as early as possible “ideally, before 11 a.m.,” and to take advantage of known quiet windows like early Christmas morning, especially if you’re only traveling an hour or two.
🚘 BTW: Some of the worst traffic in Mass. is projected to be Friday, Dec. 20, at around 3:45 p.m., between Boston and Hyannis, according to AAA. Avoid it like the plague.
✈️ The chaos doesn’t stop on the road. Despite rising plane ticket prices (up 4% over last year), air travel is also setting travel records this year, with AAA anticipating 4.7% growth over 2023 and 9.7% over 2019. Translation: Logan is going to be extra busy, Schieldrop said. So make sure you’re budgeting extra time.
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CITY
Quick & dirty headlines
Image: Steven Senne/Associated Press
⚽ Some Bostonians are giving White Stadium’s reno a red card. A growing number of voices, including City Councilor Ed Flynn, are openly calling for Mayor Michelle Wu to cancel plans to redevelop White Stadium for Boston’s new women’s pro soccer team, BOSNation. Opponents have lots of concerns, from the mounting costs, to environmental impact, to less turf time for local student-athletes. But Mayor Wu insists she’s not only listened to those worries, but that this project addresses many of them, making the stadium more usable for everyone.
❤️🩹 Mass.’ gun law report card just dropped. We’d say it’s worthy of a spot on the fridge. In its annual gun law scorecard, Giffords Law Center gave Mass. an “A” grade, up from an A- last year. We can attribute the improvement to Gov. Healey’s major crackdown on ghost guns and enhancement of our “red flag” laws — though we still came in at No. 5 for the country’s strongest gun laws. Even better: We were also ranked the safest state, with the lowest gun death rate per 100k people.
🚘 Somerville is OUT on new parking spots. Well, sorta. On Thursday night, Somerville’s City Council unanimously voted to nix rules that required the city to add a minimum number of parking spots with all-new developments. This makes Somerville the second Mass. city to completely do so, behind Cambridge, though Somerville began the process in 2019 when it ruled out parking minimums within a half mile of public transit. According to council president Ben Ewen-Campen, it’s a counterintuitive solution to Somerville’s growing traffic problem. After all, more spots = more cars = more traffic.
🤮 Boston’s ugliest building is here to stay. If you’re up on your Boston lore, you already know we’re talking about City Hall. If not, just take a look. Love it or hate it, the city’s Landmarks Commission voted to grant Boston City Hall landmark status, precisely because of its ugliness: Experts say the building is one of the best examples of “concrete modernism” out there. Now, Mayor Wu just has to sign off to make it official, which would protect the building from being beautified *ahem* changed.
ONE LAST THING
The odds of a white Christmas
Image: David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe
Are you a Bostonian dreaming of a white Christmas? Well, keep dreaming, because this year, most signs point to NO.
White Christmases (one inch of snow or more on Christmas morning) have always been relatively rare in Boston. According to the Globe, Boston proper’s chance of seeing snow on Christmas morning in any given year is around 30% — and the last time Boston saw that was in 2009.
As for this year, the potential for snow is technically there … but thanks to above-freezing temps, the Globe‘s chief meteorologist is giving it just a 1% chance in Greater Boston. Sigh.
— Written by Gia Orsino and Emily Schario
❄️ Thanks for reading! At this point, as long as it isn’t a wet Christmas, we’ll be happy.
💜 Special shoutout to today’s sponsor, The MGH Fund, for supporting local journalism and keeping our city healthy.
😬 The results are in: 47% of polled B-Siders say that politics are off-limits at their holiday gatherings, and are pretty happy about it. One reader said: “We have a no politics [at] family gatherings rule because if we don’t, someone always ends up crying.”
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