Here in Los Angeles we have a time honored tradition called traffic. The traffic is almost always bad on certain roads regardless of the time of the day. I am convinced that some people in this city never actually go home, they just ride the freeways for no reason at all hours of the day�like people ride the subways in New York. I have learned to deal with�the traffic�and generally don’t complain about it anymore after commuting for about 4 years now. Most people just roll their eyes when you mention the word and there is a look of understanding between those who battle the craziness each day.
The United States as a whole has a time honored tradition called Rush Hour. The average individual understands that when you combine Rush Hour with the previously mentioned Traffic, it’s just a mess. As far as I know, Rush Hour happens in every city twice a day, 5+ days a week, 52 weeks a year.
So why the hell does some idiot at CalTrans decide that Rush Hour is a great time to try to street sweep the carpool lane on�one of the most congested freeways in the entire state!!??� I have a decent imagination but I can’t even begin to imagine the thought process involved in what is so�obviously a bad idea. It is almost as if someone went out of their way to be an asshat this morning.
I fear we are not that far from living in the movie Idiocracy.
Well, if they worked in the dark, there is the danger that they could miss that *one* cigarette butt that would spoil the Los Angeles citiscape. Don’t forget, one butt is more glaring than a street full of butts.
In actuality, night work costs more than day work. You have to pay 1.5 times (or whatever it is) the day rate for those workers that choose the graveyard shift. There is added danger in someone not seeing the truck and plowing into them during nighttime. And face it, some bureaucrat just figured that daytime sweeps gets their people out in front of the taxpayers and makes us sigh with pleasure: “there’s my tax dollar at work.”
Go figure.
Back in the day, when I had to drive directly through the heart of LA, twice a day, for a while I was on a schedule that shifted each day by about 40 minutes to match the time on Mars. I figured the upside of working this schedule would be that I could at least get a break from traffic when I was not commuting during “rush hour”. In reality, things often got much worse in the middle of the night, as there was always some construction project going on that somehow wouldn’t show up on the traffic maps, but would bring the freeway to complete stop.
I still miss LA traffic though. I usually have only one option to get to most places I go in the Seattle area, and lord help me if I have to cross a bridge. Worse yet, the drivers are a mix of inconsiderate fools who clog every lane like it is there duty to ensure I don’t exceed the speed limit and kids, surprising often girls, who drive underpowered pieces of crap like they are playing a video game. Just because you saw someone in a movie race a car that had a frame shaped like your little death trap doesn’t mean that you have a fast car! Seriously, if I can out-accelerate you in my freaking SUV, you don’t have a nice car, and you should stay home and do your homework.