In the Nantucket harbor mooring field there is only room for a certain number of moorings because of the physical limitations of the size of the harbor. The field is carefully charted on a grid with different sized moorings for smaller or larger boats, taking into account the radius each boat needs. When it is full there is no way to accommodate anyone else on a mooring in the harbor. The harbor is full!
This leads me to ponder the notion of limited capacity on Nantucket. In the Stop & Shop when it gets ever more crowded they add on more cashiers which is somewhat helpful but they can only add so many and then there is a log jam in the lines. So we can wait in longer lines or adjust the times we shop. I now go at 6 AM and it is kind of fun to see lots of people that I know doing the same thing.
Traffic: a hot topic this summer has been how bad the traffic was during the week of July 4th. The bottlenecks occurred in the usual places: Old South Road, Washington Street, lower Pleasant Street and Five Corners and downtown. In the past locals would, sometimes gleefully, use our time-proven back routes and shortcuts (sometimes actually longer in mileage but that would take less time, and even if it did not we felt like we were beating the system). Either there are more locals or the secret is out! Again, traffic is largely a function of the time of the day and the weather (forget finding a parking spot on Main Street if it is raining in the morning in July and August). In the afternoons Town is much quieter, even during the height of the season, and it is easier to find a place to park.
Some years ago, during the Master Planning process, our community seriously explored limiting automobiles. Studies were done, articles brought to Annual Town Meeting and lots of discussion ensued but the voters, at that time, lacked the will to do anything about it. Shortly thereafter there was a recession which largely mitigated the problem for some years. Is there a limitation to the number of automobiles on Nantucket? I do not know the answer but I know this: if we do not seriously evaluate the situation and at least attempt some alternate programs, we have only ourselves to blame as we are sitting in traffic on Old South Road.