Slaves to the Machine

Traffic in the LA area-5+ lanes + overpass stopped for an hour (midday).

This past week, we took a small trip to Disneyland and to visit family in Van Nuys and Simi Valley. We opted to make the 10(+) hour drive with the 4 and 2-year-old girls, so we packed up the car and headed West. The drive through Southern Utah, Nevada, and most of California was, of course, little better than torture. From San Bernardino into the LA area, however, was unbelievably worse.

We arrived in the LA area around noon local time, and, to our surprise, were stuck in stop-and-go traffic. At noon? Really? Not for lack of infrastructure, with 5+ lanes and several freeway options within a small area. I even saw pedestrians outpacing the automobile traffic (imagine what a bicyclist could accomplish!).

Here are some thoughts on the matter:

1. Literally millions of people get in their personal automobile, drive by themselves to work, park their car for 8+ hours in a parking space someone has to pay for, then drive back home alone. I don't think 2 hours of daily commute time is uncommon. This is viewed as an acceptable amount of time lost daily--away from family and from the life that working pays for. If this were viewed as unacceptable, changes would be made. Perhaps this is the problem, that the majority is unaware of better transportation options. Hmmmmmm.


2. Second, this method of transporting one's self to one's place of employment and back seems extremely wasteful, yet quite fragile. I imagine a house held up on stilts. One of the stilts could be labeled "Employment," another "Location," another "Health," one "Investments," yet another "Debt," and, I argue, "Transportation," among others. During a crisis such as the Great Recession--arguably in recovery--one could easily lose employment, rack up debt, lose investment value, effectively pulling out stilts from under this house. With fuel prices relatively low as we speak, this stilt remains as a support to the structure, but what happens when fuel prices spike as they did in 2008? Those whose lives are propped up by a decreasing number of pillars will ultimately collapse, in part due to dependency on the personal automobile as the primary method of transport to the workplace.


3. Finally, a quote from Secretary of Transportation, Ray LaHood at the recent Bicycle Summit in Washington, D.C.: "People across America who value bicycling should have a voice when it comes to transportation planning. This is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized.”

What do you think?