Choosing Convenient Commuting

Richard Seven wrote an excellent piece called Getting Nowhere last month that explores the personal side of traffic that I touched on in my about the blogger post. The subtitle really sums it up well: Diehard singles, we commute, clog, stall, rage and refuse to change. Here are some choice quotes:

Convenience is the drug that salves commuting guilt.

Transportation planners study volume and flows and bridging the blobs where people live and work. What does not fit so easily into their matrix is the human behavior of the lone commuter who, one by one, determines congestion.
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I'm not a road-clogger, I tell myself. My commute is only five miles each way. I often work from home and on weekends just to run counter to the grain. And I need my car. No good reporter hangs around the office; nothing happens there.

Still, my morning choice strikes me as a wimpy one. I look around and see everyone else is driving alone, too. I wonder why they can't rideshare and if their excuses are valid or, like me, they just don't want to get wet. The question is not why can't they rideshare, but why won't they?

As director of the Washington State Transportation Center, Mark Hallenbeck says congestion is not just a function of too many cars in too small a passage in too tight a window. It is also the sum of choices.

"Flexibility and convenience still far outweigh the costs of driving alone," he says. "People don't really feel the pain — even though they complain about it. It isn't so bad that they are really, actively looking for an alternative. And since they aren't looking, they don't know what the alternatives are." And he hastens to add, there aren't many good transit alternatives for suburb-to-suburb commutes.
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So we drive alone and pine for relief as we idle. We spew outrage at the price of gas while we burn it into fumes. We whine about clogged roads as we help clog them. We grumble about Sound Transit yet we throw Monorail Hail Marys. We're addicted to flexibility but completely inflexible about what commuting options we will accept. Some experts say it boils down to control.

Indeed. In a perfect world, we would all be able to live wherever we want, work wherever we want, and magically get to and from anywhere we need to be in the blink of an eye. The problem is that in the real world, transportation channels have a limited capacity, and too many people make choices that don't take that under consideration.

People want big city amenities and conveniences with rural freedom and individuality, and that's just not reality. As I've said, I hate traffic, but every time I find myself sitting in an idling car, surrounded by others in the same predicament, I'm keenly aware that I'm part of the problem. At least on a subconscious level, I think most other people realize this about themselves too, but until it becomes inconvenient enough, they're not going to change. What will it take to breech that threshold? $5/gallon gasoline? $10/gallon? 3 hour commutes from Lynnwood to Seattle? Who knows. But until we reach that point, the majority of people will continue to contribute to the problem and all the while complain about it.

Me—I'll be enjoying the fresh air while I zip along on the trail, where the only traffic I have to worry about has feathers and webbed feet.

(Richard Seven, Seattle Times, 03.12.2006)