Gridlock'd

Traffic got you down? Me, too!

6:28 am... Two days into my new job and it's time to comment on the traffic. Hooray! Austin, for all its charm, has been voted one of the worst places in the country for driving. The city has grown at such a rapid rate in the last fifteen years, that city planners have utterly failed to keep up. The main arteries, IH-35, Mopac (Loop 1) and U.S. 183 are hopelessly jammed up by around 7:00 am. 

This leaves the overflow scrambling through the city streets, in an attempt to avoid the backed-up highways. Which, of course, leads to thousands of people crammed into streets mean to support maybe a hundred or two at any given time. It's a joy to spend your morning with a group of angry, frustrated, rushed people, bumper-to-bumper, wondering if you're going to be late for work because some lawn service truck has broken down ahead of them and is taking up both lanes of traffic.

It is a ridiculous thing, this traffic. And we have no one to blame but ourselves. We have taken the desire for convenience, and have turned it into the most inconvenient scenario possible. People will argue that mass transit "sucks", so they have to have their car. But the reality is that mass transit sucks because the only people who use it are those who absolutely have to do so. Okay, there is a small percentage, I'd offer it's less than 15% of the total customer base, who use it because it's either greener, or just as convenient as driving. But the rest of the folks who use it are typically doing so because $100 for a monthly bus pass is way cheaper than a car payment, plus insurance, plus gas, plus maintenance.

The truth is, if we weren't so spoiled and addicted to having personal vehicles, we could have an awesome mass transit infrastructure. Perhaps one day, when self-driving cars are established and environmental concerns force us to "act or die" we will be done with this ridiculous traffic circus. I could expound on some ideas related to traffic solutions in a much longer post. But for now, I've got to head out the door and spend the next 30 minutes getting to my job... which is 9 miles away... That's right, my net speed is around 18 miles per hour, and I'm going cross-town... I'm not even fighting the primary traffic flow... Good times... 6:46 am...