Rush Hour Traffic

By George W Iliff

You may not realize the fact that a couple hours of bumper-to- bumper, stop-and-go rush hour traffic mornings and afternoons is a good thing.
Honest! Because of the maddening and infuriating misery caused by rush hour traffic, the resultant pressures tend to encourage the following corrective actions:

1. Employees investigate every possible route to their work thereby utilizing the highway system to it’s maximum extent.
2. Employees and employers try to stagger work hours so as to avoid peak traffic times.
   
3. Employees can sometimes set up “Work at Home” arrangements thereby relieving traffic.
   
4. Employees are more apt to try to car pool and use the faster and more efficient HOV lanes.
   
5. Employees sometimes give up their precious automobiles and take public transit.
   
6. Employees often move so that their residences are closer to work so as to avoid long commutes and this reduces traffic density. Also, these relocations tend to result in “infill” which increases population density and makes public transit more viable.
   

Retired people, house-wives and the like soon learn to run their errands at other than rush hour traffic times.
So, you see, rush hour traffic does serve a purpose.  Actually, in the final analysis, rush hour traffic is unavoidable because any attempt to build lots and lots of freeways only causes the above factors to operate in reverse and cause more traffic.