Traffic
I hate traffic! I hate it, it literally sucks the life force from me with every creeping mile. I think I would not be very happy with my life if I ended spending a major portion of it in traffic. I can’t imagine spending 3-4 hours every work day stuck on a freeway creeping along with every other zombie, for years upon endless years.
That being said, here are my solutions to the traffic problem!
- Large trucks must stay in the right lane! I can’t tell you how many times I have been on a freeway and some a-hole truck driver thinks that he will just get into lane #3 to pass some other a-hole truck driver who thinks he will just get into lane #2 to pass some other a-hole truck driver that is going 53mph. Imagine this, a four lane expressway that could handle loads of car traffic jammed up because there are large semi-trucks inn 3 of the 4 lanes! Can you imagine it? If not, just go drive on the freeways in SoCal for a few minutes and I am sure a group of a-hole truck drivers will accomdate your lack of imagination. I honestly think that if trucks were relegated to the slow lane only, and I mean ONLY, that traffic would flow considerably better. I am willing to make certain considerations for them though. If there is a steep grade, I think there should be two slow lanes, one for trucks only, and one regular one so they can pass each other. I also think that it would be acceptable for them to move out of the rightmost lane prior to an interchange so that they can navigate their way onto the correct freeway.
- Section off the carpool lanes with concrete dividers and seriously limit the ingress and egress points for them. This would help to eliminate the near gridlock that happens every 2-3 miles because some a-hole wasn’t paying attention to the signs and failed has to jump out of the carpool lane, zip across four lanes of traffic and exit the freeway. If you don’t give stupid people too many options, they can’t make as many bad choices
- Once the carpool lane is sectioned off, make the minimum speed limit 90mph and set a maximum of 120mph. Why not? If you don’t have to worry about lane changes and whatnot why not? Most people drive close to 90mph in the fast lane anyways, so what is the harm?
- Limit the number of on-ramps and off-ramps. Again, people are stupid, limiting their choices limits their mistakes. Most people get on the freeway, head directly for the fast-lane and cruise along at 75-80mph until about 1,000ft before their exit where they dash across all the other lanes with wild abandon because they don’t want to miss their stop. With our current configuration, this happens every mile or so, if we only had a exit every 5 miles or so, the a-holes cutting everyone off to make their exit would be condensed to a smaller area
- Now for my favourite solution: Mass Transit!!!! I am all for ripping out freeway lanes in favor of commuter and high speed rail lines. 10 lane freeways running across our landscape chock full of single occupancy vehicles burning Middle Eastern oil is a piss poor solution. We need an effective mass transit system of buses and trains that actually work together in concert to get people where they need to go in a convenient manner. If we stop pooring money into our parent’s idea of utopia (where everyone owns a car and drives for hours to work), we can start making some smart decisions. This would of course require us to completely change our retarded, suburban sprawl method of housing ourselves, but that is just one more upside to my idea.
