Opus 2013-195: On the Street: Traffic Relief or Travel Relief?

Advertising works, even if it is nonsense. 

I was driving down the freeway and saw a billboard.  It said, “Traffic relief in the works.”  It showed signs of busses and trains.  It was a sign advertising the metro.  It’s concept was that somehow more buses will produce traffic relief.  Maybe so but it won’t produce travel relief.

This kind of thing will only work on people who have never been forced into mass transit.  I realize that when you only know busses and trains your lack of experience means ignorance but if you have tasted both mass and private transportation you know one is vastly superior.

I have taken mass transit.  Somehow I don’t see standing in the sun and rain waiting for it to be convenient for a bus driver to arrive is a good definition of traffic relief.  Or back East, standing in the freezing rain and snow waiting for the train as the wind destroyed the tissue of my ears, take your pick.  Even in rush hour public transportation adds significantly to the amount of time it takes to get from point A to point B, or within a half mile if the routes are not where you want to go. 

I also have a hard time enjoying pressing myself in with a bunch of smelly bodies and being thrown around by stopping and starting.  Just as a note of safety, if you keep your doors locked, muggings don’t generally happen in your own car and I have never had my pocket picked on the freeway. 

Traffic relief?  Total unemployment would certainly reduce the traffic.  Also, maybe moving out of California would be something that would reduce the density of traffic.

The government is working on the first solution and I am working on the second. 

homo unius libri