Concern over traffic and parking problems in Edgartown’s historic town center has spread all the way to Boston.

To Northeastern University, specifically, where a group of transportation engineering students have tackled the town’s traffic situation as part of their senior project.

A Martha’s Vineyard Commission subcommittee decided this week to require a new traffic study for a proposed fuel station off State Road in Vineyard Haven, but not before a bit of open disagreement on the merits.

The automobile has long been an integral part of American life; there are 40 million more registered motor vehicles in this country than licensed drivers.

Yet on Vineyard sidewalks and bike paths this week, people cruised along on bicycles with no worries about traffic and congestion. The parking lots for the Tisbury and Edgartown park and ride programs were jammed full, while bus stops for the Martha’s Vineyard Transit Authority were packed with people waiting to be picked up at all hours of the day.

A final draft of a county initiative to move beyond summer gridlock calls on Island officials to replace talk with action and develop a regional, coordinated plan to target growth and traffic problems on the Island.

Susan Wasserman, a planning consultant and the facilitator of the in-depth study of the Island’s transportation problems, presented the results of Transportation 2000: Moving Beyond Gridlock to the county commissioners this Wednesday along with project assistant Juleann VanBelle. A final draft of the report goes to the printer today.

“The preservation of the road, its bordering hedgerows and walls, its overhanging limbs, its vistas of rolling countryside, is a matter of dollars and cents. Visitors come to the Vineyard for just such enjoyments as this noble old road offers....What it represents is what we need to keep and cherish, and when we are troubled we may well drive up and down the Middle Road and clear our thoughts to the proper order of the natural world.”

Members of the Martha’s Vineyard Commission heard last week about a comprehensive new effort to lessen the number of cars on Island roads and make sure that those roads maintain their rural character.

In order to solve the Island’s traffic troubles and preserve its country feel, the MVC must embrace a plan and aggressively seek federal funds for two goals, they were told: establishing a system for reducing the number of cars on Island roads and rewriting government standards for road construction, at least as they apply to the Island.

Woods Hole never witnessed a morning quite like July 1, 1995.

Sunrise in the port town revealed a thick trail of overstuffed sedans, wagons, trucks and jeeps snaking its way from standby line at the packed Steamship Authority terminal to the Woods Hole Road and beyond. The standby line itself topped 400 cars; more than 1,000 passengers awaited ferries to begin a four-day holiday weekend.

It was, in a word, gridlock.

An automatic traffic signal has been placed in Monument Square, Oak Bluffs, the first traffic signal in southeastern Massachusetts to be accepted and approved by the Department of Public Works, according to town officials. With five streets opening into the square and carrying the bulk of Island traffic, this signal splits and divides the stream of vehicles in a way calculated to eliminate practically all confusion.