Opinion: Don't Be a Victim of Traffic.

Something occured to me the other day and that may or may not be obvious to everyone else: Each day's traffic is new.

Think about it. Traffic isn't something that just exists and we join and leave it each day. It actually stops existing every night, and then the next morning it begins fresh again. We create repetitive traffic with our routines and jobs, so it gives the illusion of a constant problem.

We choose every day to create traffic. It is a decision we make to get into our cars (usually alone) and search for a somewhat-less-congested route to work. We are actively contributing to traffic simply by being on the road. Even if you are riding the bus to work, you are still creating traffic, albeit less than if you were driving.

Now, don't get me wrong, I believe that commuting is a necessary part of our current economoy (until we develop the technology and ethic to do our work from remote locations). But I don't believe that traffic has to be as bad as it is, even with the current infrastructure.

You can choose to be victimized by what traffic appears to be; a necessary evil of the economy that can't be avoided which some research group is "thinking about" and some government agency is spending your money to "do something about it".


Or you can see it for what it is. Traffic is the result of collective decisions people make to drive at similar times to get to places they want to go, and they try to get there as fast as possible.

Does this realization change the decisions you're going to make about how you commute?

Changing the traffic system takes time and money, and there are things you can do today to change your commute. Whether you decide to take transit, start a carpool, drive at different hours, telecommute, motorcycle, bike, walk, move closer to work, or just drive better alone doesn't matter to us. What does matter is that you think about these choices and make the most of what we've got today.

Because ultimately, it is you that decides to get up in the morning and drive to work and create traffic every day.

National Bike to Work Day

Tomorrow is National Bike to Work Day, read more about Bike2WorkDay here. Many breakfasts are being offered, including one from my employer!

If you really want to send the oil companies a message, forget about meaningless one-day boycotts where you don't buy gas built still drive. Take the bike to work once a week, or ride the bus twice a week. If all Americans did that we'd save 10 billion barrels of oil a year, costing the oil companies about $600 billion dollars and lowering the price of gas by $1.25 a gallon.

37 miles of bike-lanes coming

Seattle is installing 37 miles of bike trails in the city, according to its Bicycle Master Plan. The Ballard News Tribune has a nice, if slightly Ballard-centric analysis. The plan includes bike trails, bike lines, "sharrows" (pavement arrows that indicate for cars to share the line), bike shoulders and much, much more. There's a real nice section about bicycles and transit. The deadline for comments on the plan has been extended to May 18th, so take a look at it here.


Hopefully, this will help reduce car-head and piss-off the old-timer haters that have proudly put this city in statis for decades. Certainly, it doesn't please The Stranger's Erica C Barnett, but she's a little, well, unstable.

Cross-posted at the Seattle Transit Blog.