Tom Vanderbilt has written what looks to be a fascinating book, “Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (And What It Says About Us),” that examines the human interaction with streets, roads and highways. Remember, transportation systems are more than sluices of bedrock, asphalt and steel. They are designed for use by human beings. And humans are often quite perverse.
According to a book review by Slate writer Michael Agger, Vanderbilt visited the city of Drachten, made famous by the “intersection heard around the world.” Dutch traffic engineer Hans Mondermann redesigned a congested four-way crossing in the city of Drachten by removing all of the traffic signs. Uncertain, drivers slowed down, cooperated with one another, and shared the road with pedestrians and bicyclists. Traffic actually flowed more smoothly. Monderman’s animating principle was to put some of the “social world” into the “traffic world.”
(Bacon’s Rebellion blogged about the Drachten experiment here. My question is whether such spontaneous courtesy is the unique product of Dutch or Northern European culture, or whether the behavior that would replicate across cultures.)
Vanderbilt notes other fascinating instances of how human cultures intersect with traffic engineering. In the United States, people slow down their cars to rubberneck at accidents; when screens are placed in the way, people slow down to look at the screens. In the emerging car culture of China, apparently, there’s a problem created by motorists stopping to urinate in the middle of new highways.
Amazon.com links a one-pager on the “Traffic” book page: “Some Things About Traffic that May Surprise You.” Some of the “surprises” are indeed startling, but others would not surprise readers of Bacon’s Rebellion at all:
- 80 percent of all traffic in a typical city runs on 10 percent of the roads. (As I’ve long maintained, we have more than enough lane-miles of road — it’s how we organize and connect them that’s the problem.)
- One in five urban crashes is related to the search for parking.
- It takes longer for people who circle looking for the “best” parking space to get to where they’re going than people who take the first place they see. (Someone please tell that to my wife!)
- Anywhere between 10 percent and 70 percent of urban traffic consists of people just looking for parking.
- Saturday at 1 p.m. has heavier traffic than weekday rush hour. (That’s because everyone’s out running errands… and looking for parking!)
(Hat tip: I owe someone a hat tip, but I lost track. My apologies.)
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