Roads are saturated: what next?

Early Thursday morning, access to the Victoria Bridge was blocked for a couple of hours by a minor train derailment near Bridge and Mill, which created a domino effect traffic snarl all over the southwest part of town. The Journal says the city’s roads are so saturated that any unexpected obstacle, such as the overturned tanker truck on a Champlain bridge access, also Thursday morning, can wreak traffic havoc because there are few alternative routes.

But if there were alternative routes, wouldn’t they already be saturated too, at rush hour?

The expert the Journal consulted doesn’t have a solution except some old, unpopular deterrents to driving which no politician is ever likely to propose. A piece in Metro surveys a few more high-tech approaches to traffic congestion but their expert begins by admitting there is no miracle cure.