Traffic is this huge monstrous beast that plagues the everyday lives of urban dwellers across the world, from the strapping yuppies from Los Angeles to London, to the humble rickshaw drivers from Delhi to Manila.
This is a particular problem across many Asian cities. True enough, the majority of the world’s population resides in this area and the cities here are massively congested.
Source: World Gazetteer 2010 Estimates (Wikipedia)
Although smarter, vastly more qualified people have been trying to solve this problem both through scientific analysis and proper legislation, I will attempt to take a look on how and why traffic happens from a very practical standpoint.
It all begins with one driver. He’s just like you and me: a weary soul determined to get from point A to point B by generally following the rules of the road and keeps proper driving etiquette. Let’s call him Mr. Joe.
For some reason Mr. Joe needs to slow down. It could be because he needs to take an important phone call, or has a ball itch he needs to scratch.
Whatever the reason, this guy slows down, causing the other people behind him to slow down as well.
Now imagine in that long line of cars behind him is a guy called Mr. Jerk. He’s in a hurry, amped up on 3 shots of espresso, and is hugely impatient.
He gets annoyed with the sudden change in speed of the cars in front of him and abruptly shifts lanes.
As he shifts, another Mr. Joe on the next lane has to abruptly stop, hence slowing down his own lane of cars.
Now in this row of cars, there’s most likely going to be another Mr. Jerk.
Or more importantly, a Mr. Joe than turns into a Mr. Jerk.
Soon after, it’s a CHAIN REACTION of Mr. Joes slowing down, and Mr. Jerks changing lanes.
Then there you go: Traffic Jam!
But of course, you already know that in a congested road, any small action by even a handful of motorists causes an exponential effect to the flow of vehicles behind them.
This cause and effect is particularly more pronounced when the road is just EXTREMELY DENSE with VEHICLES.
Imagine a lot of Mr. Joes and Mr. Jerks, not to mention other bits of things that’s sure to cause disruption on the road from dumb chickens, to stupid pedestrians, to road construction, and worse, vehicular accidents, all over cities with hundreds of thousands of motorists.
It’s mind-blowing chaos!
So to summarize what causes traffic jams:
But why are there too many cars on the road in the first place, particularly in the congested cities of the third world? Well, that’s a more complex issue of course, which I will attempt to tackle anyway.
First, and most importantly, there’s just too many freakin’ people in these cities.
Among the top most densely-populated cities in the world, a lot of them are in the 3rd world, especially in Asia.
SOURCE: Wikipedia
*I adjusted the figures to nice round numbers because I’m too lazy to type the exact number (like a plus or minus couple of dozen people will really matter at this point?)
So basically, the more people who live in a fixed space, the more the need for vehicles. Not to mention all the other baggage that comes with humans living in the planet, from the things they build (houses, buildings, shopping malls), to the stuff they consume (food and other products that will eventually turn into waste).
But how did all these people wind up in those cities? Again, this an even more complex issue that spans from individual socioeconomic needs for better employment opportunities, to broadly speaking, short-sighted urban and country planning by the government.
Of course, you can’t fault people for needing jobs to put food on the table. Or to put iPhones in their pockets.
So who do I blame next? The government of course.
Bad governance, as exemplified by corruption, incompetence, and just general short-sightedness by a city’s or country’s officials, results to bad urban planning, which leads to overpopulated cities with poor infrastructure to support an increasing amount of urban dwellers.
At the end of it, there’s just too many people in our largest, most densely populated cities to ensure a quality of living that entails more “open spaces”. But because of a complex mix of individual socioeconomic needs, geopolitical issues and economic policies, we just decided to cram everyone within small areas of land.
So why aren’t we aiming to spread outside from city yet? Again this is another super intricate issue, but I think I can sum it up in one statement:
Transportation systems and infrastructure, particularly in developing countries, have NOT caught up with the increasing pace of our highly tech-driven urban lifestyles.
Since the advent of the internet from the mid-90s, they way we work has drastically changed. We are receiving information literally at the speed of light (or sometimes a lot less depending on your internet connection). And we are expected to process and respond to this information immediately.
Unfortunately, the way we move ourselves in the physical world has NOT drastically changed at all.
And for many reasons, our physical presence in our places of work and social lives is just better and necessary.
You never know what’s below a person’s screen during a Skype call
Why? Because we’re old school like that. We yearn for the physical world where we can touch paper, hear your colleagues gossip, and smell that hot girl / guy’s scent.
In other words, as humans, we really just need to be around the people, and stuff. And to be around people and stuff, we need to physically move ourselves from point A to point B, and maybe to point C (point C, being that bar that has happy hour from Monday to Friday, 6PM to 8PM).
Obviously, because people still need to physically move themselves to different places (maybe even more increasingly nowadays), and the fact that there’s going to be more and more people in the years to come fighting for limited resources, including space, more congestion essentially means more chaos.
Unless our transportation systems improve within and between cities, our urban centers become more decongested, our lifestyles adjust to entail less driving, or we just manage to make less babies to the point that population growth is manageable, traffic jams will still remain and will get worse.
Those Star Trek teleportation things are sounding mighty good right about now.
Or at least a brand spanking new Hyperloop.
In the meantime, we’ll have to settle for this.
So the next time you’re on the road, especially in one that’s jam-packed with vehicles, just remember every bit of action you take affects whole lot of other people behind you.
Drive safely! And try to be more of a Mr. Joe and less of a Mr. Jerk.
humid monkey 