The other day, I found myself in the unpleasant situation of having to drive to an appointment in a nearby town. It was a recurring appointment, along a familiar route, but fortunately, not one which occurred frequently. The trip was expected to take no more than 15 minutes, under normal circumstances, so doubling the amount of time required seemed to be a sure way to guarantee a prompt arrival.
At the time of my departure, I imagined myself coolly walking into the waiting area with time to relax and review my notes before the meeting. What happened instead was that I ran into unbearable traffic on the first route I attempted. This was certainly not normal traffic. Cars were lined up for what appeared to be a quarter mile, with one car practically sitting on the rear bumper of another, and no indication of motion in anyone’s future. In other words, we sat at a dead standstill, with nowhere to go, and no way to get off of the road.
Five minutes into this mess, I began to consider my alternatives. If only I could reach the next exit, I could cut across town and take a smaller road that ran parallel to the one I was on. In spite of the cool weather, I rolled down the driver’s side window in an attempt to utilize a blast of cold air to ward off my growing panic at the thought of being late for an important meeting.
The person I was meeting with had a tight schedule. If I didn’t get there at the appointed time, our meeting would be cut short. This would be disadvantageous to me, and thinking about it made me wish for complete control over my fate. As the cars ahead began to creep forward, I crawled up the bumper of the car in front of me, desperate to reach the exit, which was just beyond my grasp.
A few minutes seemed like an eternity as I looked for ways to get onto the shoulder of the road to pass the traffic on the right. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much of a shoulder, and my car wouldn’t fit if I tried to squeeze alongside the growing row of cars.
Finally, I reached the exit and pulled off of the road. Once free from the traffic jam, I tried to gain some time by driving as fast as possible on the narrow road leading to the center of town. Despite my best effort, I missed the first light by a hair, and had to wait for pedestrians to cross the street before I got the green light.
I heaved a sigh of relief as I peered ahead and saw a clear path in front of me. I was making good time until I hit the intersection where I had to turn left. A line of at least a dozen cars was waiting at the red light and I couldn’t maneuver around them to go into the left turn lane.
A glance at my watch made my heart sink because even if I drove as fast as the speed limit would allow, I wouldn’t make it to my destination on time. Thoughts of canceling the appointment filled my mind. Should I try to make up some of the lost time and salvage part of the meeting? Or, should I call it quits and hope that I could be worked into a busy schedule within a week or two? I decided to forge on.
Crossing the double yellow line, I inched into the left turn lane. Six cars were lined up in front of me. This light usually allowed three or four cars to turn before turning red. I would never make it. I resigned myself to waiting for the light to go through another cycle before I could turn onto the main road.
At last, the light turned green and I blew my horn at the car in front of me when failed to move right away. What kind of idiot holds up traffic when dozens of cars are trying to get through the intersection? As I blasted the horn, I had a bad feeling about the traffic leader in front of me. He was oblivious to everyone on the road but himself, proudly displaying an obnoxious driver trait which I became aware of when I started riding my bike on urban roads.
The anxiety of the driver tailgating me was thick enough to cut with a knife. We all wanted to get where we were going, but the first car crept along at a snail’s pace. This reminded me of the rude comments I’d heard about how cyclists tie up traffic by riding below the speed limit. But, this time, a car was tying up traffic — a common occurrence which most drivers won’t admit to when they’re chastising cyclists for being on the road.
Time seemed to have been elongated when I finally reached the road where the office was located. I was a few miles from my destination and thought that I might manage to get there only five minutes late. Although I had hoped to arrive early, this arrangement wasn’t too bad. After all, I would still have enough time to cover the key points I needed to make and could follow up by phone.
Just as I was beginning to feel some relief over being just a few minutes late, I hit a bottleneck in the traffic. I was so close, yet so far. I couldn’t move. It was tempting to park my car and walk the last couple of miles, but there wasn’t enough time. All I could do was inch my way closer to where I was headed.
My proximity to the office created an agony which one can only experience in a motor vehicle. A mere touch on the accelerator could have gotten me to the office’s driveway in less than five minutes. Yet, I sat motionless, listening to my car’s engine groaning as it idled. Had I been on my bicycle, I could have made this trip in half the time. I could have continued to move at a steady pace. I could have circumvented the bottlenecks and the traffic jams, the maddening idling and wasted gas. I could have counted on a constant speed rarely attained by drivers in an urban or congested suburban environment.
At that moment, I realized that driving was nothing more than a game of stopping and starting and sitting and inching. Bursts of speed were transitory and wholly dependent on a lack of other motor vehicles on the road. In fact, as I sat trapped in the throes of resignation, the concept of cars as a fast form of transportation revealed itself as nothing more than an illusion.
Wonderfully put – you really captured the agony of getting around by car. That feeling is compounded by knowing how taking a bike would have been as fast and infinitely more pleasant.
That is a really damning indictment of what’s it’s like to get around in a city by car. And this is a city that has been shaped specifically for the motorists’ convenience for the past 80 years! Simply amazing.
I really can’t understand why people choose to drive in this city, or to even insist on the plainly impossible fact that everyone should be *allowed* to drive whenever and wherever they wish in a space-limited urban environment.
The sense of freedom I have on my bicycle is just an enormous contrast with the restriction and frustration I have when driving a car here.
It’s particularly ironic when one considers that “Freedom to drive” was the rallying cry “motordom” (the auto industry, car clubs, dealers, etc.) used to make driving at high speeds on urban streets a “normal” thing during the battle over the legitimate use of streets in the 1910s and 20s. [See Fighting Traffic by PD Norton]
You might also enjoy the Social Ideology of the Motorcar: http://www.bikereader.com/contributors/misc/gorz.html
Boy, I’ve felt that anxiety of trying to get somewhere with an important deadline. If I’m in a car should I take Storrow Drive & maybe get stuck in traffic with no way out or go down Comm. Ave where I can bail out if necessary? Or should I take the T, which is hurry up & wait with no chance to hasten the journey. Of course the dependable choice for short distances is to go by bike. It sounds like a bike was not an option. So did you make your appointment?
Car drivers need to be educated to the fact that the more of us that are on bikes and not driving our cars ,the fewer cars there will be slowing them down when they really need to get somewhere by car.
Hi Rebecca,
You guessed right, riding my bike was not an option. I made it to the appointment, but I was 15 minutes late. As a result, the short meeting wasn’t as productive as I had hoped.
You’d think that people would catch on to the concept of using alternative means of transportation to reduce traffic congestion. Maybe as the number of bike lanes in the Boston area increases, more people will choose to ride bikes, especially for short trips. This will go a long way in reducing congestion, although progress could be impeded by fare increases and service cuts in public transportation. The best solution to this problem would be for cyclists and riders of public transportation to collectively advocate for a multifaceted approach to providing alternatives for people who would like to reduce their dependence on cars. To that end, cyclists need to start looking beyond just bicycle advocacy and look at the big picture, because only then, will the car become less central to the American transportation landscape.
By the way Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City
by Peter D Norton is a great read & one of my favorite books. its hows how the mindset our society has today about the rights of auto drivers and their ownership of the roads came about.
I ran across it recently and got the reasonably priced Kindle edition. So far it’s been eye-opening. Seems very similar in some ways to what I have read about how the Netherlands got on their start to becoming cycle-friendly. Debates about the proper use of streets, what level of vehicular homicide can be considered “acceptable”, and so on.