Stop and Go

I recently conducted a little experiment while driving around my city. Firstly I should admit that I am an opportunistic driver. I take advantage of every green light, especially left hand turn arrows. That may change the route to my destination but it beats waiting at a red light.

I decided I would try an alternate strategy to see if it made any difference in the time it takes to get around town. So this week I calmly drove the speed limit and adhered to my usual route to and from work and the gym and other places. I listened to a book and breathed and generally drove as if I had all the time in world.

Here's what I discovered: I was stopped at every red light from my house to work. Driving the speed limit I never hit green lights. It took 5-10 minutes longer to get to work which is 6.2 miles from my house. This week I have spent what seems like hours waiting at red lights burning $4.50 a gallon gasoline. On the up side I've had time to check email and text while at red lights. I never did that before because I was actually driving. Boredom  turned me into iPhone junkie almost overnight. I'm thinking this is not really a good thing.  I've also been able to listen to lots more of my audio book while waiting for lights to change. A mixed blessing given the books I've downloaded recently.

Obvious to me at least, the city does not time the lights to encourage an even flow of traffic. At least it doesn't if you drive the speed limit. Now, if I drive in my usual style looking ahead at lights and trying to hit green ones I can avoid lots of wait time. However, in order to hit the greens I have to drive five to ten miles OVER the speed limit, ten being the key to avoid the most red lights. Even then I squeak through on yellows sometimes. Perfectly legal.

If I were a conspiracy theorist I might imagine that the city wants me to speed so they can collect revenue from speeding tickets. But I've never gotten a speeding ticket so that theory is out. Maybe they want me to stop at all the mini-mall corners and look at the shops. Nah, too many lights are in residential areas. I can't really figure it out except to conclude that traffic engineers are, to put it bluntly incompetent.

Next week I'm calling off my experiment. I don't like spending so much extra time in the car, I hate listening to the radio, I hate driving slowly (I grew up in the age of V-8 engines with horsepower), and waiting endlessly at red lights just makes me irritated, harshes my mellow if you will.

Vroom! Vroom!