Saturday, January 22, 2011

Traffic really is as bad as you thought

There are very few things I hate more than traffic, especially unnecessary traffic (eg rubbernecking, merging issues, being an idiot whilst operating a car, etc). Its a combination of a lack of enforcement of constantly broken laws - eg left lane for passing- and overall a lack of adequate training for drivers. Once you get a license, and you keep mailing back your renewal, that's it you're good to drive until a judge takes it away (sometimes due to a doctors recommendation, age, drink driving). I honestly think we should have refresher coarses every few years and for god sakes, standardize and TOUGHEN a driver's license test. Mine was 45 seconds long... Given with my extreme ability to Schumacher my (friend's borrowed) car, that's all he needed to give me the stamp of approval, but that was an exception (he types remembering how unbelievably nervous he actually was doing the K-turn).

Back to the link I'm posting-

From the article:



[The brains at the Texas Transportation Institute in their annual Urban Mobility Report (.pdf)] found traffic in 2008 was better than it had been in at least a decade, but the stop-and-go grind returned in 2009 as the economy improved. In compiling the report, the researchers used real-time traffic data for 439 urban areas to determine how far we’re going and how long it’s taking us to get there. The bottom line? Gridlock forced us to spend an additional 4.8 billion hours in traffic in 2009, wasting an additional 3.9 billion gallons of fuel. All told we blew $115 billion in traffic last year when you consider things like wasted fuel, lost work time and shipping delays.



Wow.




Source -> http://www.wired.com/autopia/2011/01/you-wasted-34-hours-in-traffic-in-2009

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