Mother Of All Jams

Today, I was stuck in a massive traffic jam. The worse part of it was that all roads heading from north to south have to pass through 4 major expressways and they were all jam-packed with drivers trying to avoid jams from all of them. The one I'm taking doesn't charge toll and is the most direct and fastest route to my office.

When I left my house at 0730H this morning, I turned on the radio and found out that there was a big accident involving a trailer, a car and a motorcyclist 3/4 of the way down closer to work. I wanted to take another express route, this one charges toll, so heck. The radio then went on to say that there was also an accident on this one with the tail-back all the way to blah and blah. Sigh, I've run out of options here. I followed the usual route, travelling at an average speed of 25 to 35 km/h. I could have gotten out of my car and run to work faster, but let's not go there.

When I was halfway to work, I decided to take another route that runs perpendicular to the usual route, and then later turn back and make a big round. I know, at this point in time, I was desperate to get to work on time, and I could almost make it.

Taking this new expressway, I saw an exit that could take me to work through a short-cut. I took it. I regretted it. This short-cut turned out to have another huge traffic jam. There was no way to make a U-turn back onto the expressway, and I had to get off at the next intersection which was far, far away to take another route to work. I called in to work to tell them I was going to be late, I wish I could have said I was turning back and going home.

I was basically navigating with the street map and driving at the same time, trying to see which small lane or short-cut could get me through all this jam. It was a most infuriating morning. By the time I got to work, I had been on the road for 2 whole hours! I could travel to another country by plane and be there in 2 hours for crying out loud! The usual travel time to work is 40 minutes!

Here are the things that made the traffic jam worse:

1. An accident or a breakdown anywhere along the route. The vehicles, depending on which lane, just sit in that lane, blocking traffic and everyone has to change lanes to go around them and avoid them.
2. Radio annoucements help to alert you to traffic jams, but I think that they also cause them to a certain extent. Everyone will be taking the same route to avoid the jam, thus creating another jam and so on and so forth.
3. Idiotic drivers who change lane whenever there's a gap in front of the next car to get ahead. These asshole drivers cause people who are driving to brake to let them in, thus causing a slow-down.
4. Having buses or heavy vehicles along the route. These vehicles are generally slow, they are slow to accelerate and slow to change lanes. Slowness is not acceptable in traffic.
5. Having too many intersections with no traffic lights to control the traffic flow out onto the main expressways will just slow everyone down. This is because drivers from the intersection tend to cut into the fastest moving lane to get ahead. When they do this, everyone has to slow down to avoid them.

I wish there was another way to avoid these jams, but with the number of cars on the road here increasing, I really doubt that it can be avoided, if ever. I know that my friends overseas tell me that in their country, their traffic jams don't move, the cars just sit there for hours, the whole motorway is almost like a gigantic temporary car park for rush hour traffic!

Perhaps we need a helicopter service here. I think if I start that, and charge a $50 fare for those who need to take my helicopter services to work, I'll be richest person on this planet.

But in the end, I guess I just have to be thankful for small things.