Is this Love or Congestion?
Sydney’s transport commissioner was recently talking about congestion in his city and made this analogy:
“It’s like being in love. If you think you are in love, you are in love. If you think you are in traffic, you are in traffic.”
He was trying to make the point that people tend not to think of traffic in relative terms. To wit: “It’s no good for me saying, ‘Oh, it’s much worse in New York or Paris.’ ”
I’m not sure if this is some kind of power-of-positive thinking exercise, in which case the next time you encounter heavy traffic you could repeat the following mantra: “I am not in traffic. I am not in traffic.”
It also hints at how elusive traffic is; sure, the engineers have their “level of service” designations and all that, but there is no universal standard for “bad” or “good” traffic. People in North Dakota might get itchy when they fail to make it through a traffic light on the first pass; a person in L.A. might feel lucky to make a left turn on the second arrow. And when one hears figures comparing early 20th century urban speeds in London or Manhattan being the same as they are now, should this even be termed as congestion or “bad traffic” and not simply be the default operating condition?
(thanks Richard)
![[del.icio.us]](http://www.howwedrive.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/delicious.png)
![[Digg]](http://www.howwedrive.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/digg.png)
![[Facebook]](http://www.howwedrive.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/facebook.png)
![[Google]](http://www.howwedrive.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/google.png)
![[MySpace]](http://www.howwedrive.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/myspace.png)
![[Slashdot]](http://www.howwedrive.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/slashdot.png)
![[StumbleUpon]](http://www.howwedrive.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/stumbleupon.png)
![[Yahoo!]](http://www.howwedrive.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/yahoo.png)
This entry was posted on Monday, April 27th, 2009 at 8:14 am and is filed under Congestion, Traffic Psychology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
| 
April 28th, 2009 at 8:02 am
Traffic is nothing like love. You can think all you want you’re in love and not be. But you can think all you want you’re not in traffic, but it’s just not true.
May 7th, 2009 at 4:20 am
It’s definitely all relative, people’s perceptions from place to place, that is. We traffic engineers run the numbers the same for everybody, and an LOS F is an LOS F the same no matter where you go, but the perceptions of how BAD it is are exaggerated in the rural communities. They think they have LOS F but it often calculates to a C or D, and when they learn that, they remember LA. And the people in LA don’t just have lots of LOS F, they have LOS F1 or LOS F2 or F3 to describe a congestion period that lasts for HOURS, and not just a half an hour or so during a “peak hour.” When it’s jammed up for three hours, you have LOS F3. Ugh.