Garrett Hardin wrote a seminal environmental piece many years ago titled The Tragedy Of The Commons. We should all be rereading it. As the summer of 2015 winds down, many folks (including visitors) have commented that the traffic is the worst ever. Many Islanders and not a few visitors have commented that aside from work and family related commitments, they barely leave their houses during July and August — a period that is now stretching back to mid May.

Indeed, some have commented that they can’t leave their own properties at times since the struggle to get out into traffic is so onerous. A case in point, last Saturday, traffic into West Tisbury was backed up for over a mile in virtually every direction (to the hostel on the easterly side and past the Chilmark line on the south side). Sunset hour in Menemsha has become such a traffic snarl (and very dangerous to boot) that alternative parking and a free shuttle bus have been provided at the Chilmark landfill.

Yesterday, at 0910, on a trip back from the Sailing Camp in Oak Bluffs, I counted (and then stopped counting) 75 vehicles headed north on Barnes Road between the roundabout and the intersection of the Edgartown-West Tisbury Road. This isn’t pleasant; it isn’t rational and it definitely isn’t safe. The question of why do visitors put up with this should instead be why do we put up with this situation?

The solution is not more roads, bigger parking lots, or wider roads (although more bike paths and pedestrian ways free of vehicles would be a boon); the solution is much simpler and much less expensive. The solution is fewer vehicles, lest we turn into the slowly moving parking lot that we are rapidly approaching. Do the math: If there are 100,000 hypothetical people here (an underestimate) and one in four is in a vehicle going somewhere during the day, that means 25,000 vehicles on the road. We are an Island of somewhat less than 100 square miles, and maybe 75 miles of road public road, with a few dirt roads thrown in. That divides out to 333.3 vehicles on each and every mile. Sounds like Manhattan doesn’t it?

The traffic (exhaust, noise, dangerous driving, long delays) is only a symptom of a lingering and possibly fatal illness. Taking the bus is one alternative which helps and so are bicycle riders and pedestrians, but the more important alternative is coming up with an economy which does not rely on tourism and second home rentals. We all can puzzle out that such economy is a chimera because basically there are only four months of income to cover 12 months of outgo, and much of that income flows off Island to second home owners or to hotel owners, or even to other countries in the form of wages and tips.

So read my lips: It is time for economic change, and every time you doubt the wisdom of that, count the passing cars. You will agree that we’ve got far too many here for too much of the year.

Virginia Crowell Jones
West Tisbury