How is it that highways can have personalities?<\/p>\n
The I-10\u00a0 in California changes character as it goes east from ocean.\u00a0 It’s a typical southern California multi-lane concrete freeway in Los Angeles that becomes\u00a0 something out of a Mad Max<\/em> movie in the Inland Empire, especially around the Colton rail yards.\u00a0 By the time it reaches Yuciapa, it’s settled down again into a lanky western interstate.<\/p>\n No doubt that this personality can be defined by factors like traffic density, the physical landscape, the number of exits, development alongside the highway (either preceding it or because of it), and the condition of the actual road.\u00a0 But the people driving on the road play a big part, too, in defining its character.<\/p>\n Whatever the cause, it never ceases to amaze me that a highway can have a personality.\u00a0 Generalizing a bit, highways\u00a0 in the IE are insane.<\/p>\n I thought that New Jersey, where I grew up, was the last word in traffic until I moved to Boston.\u00a0 Even driving in Manhattan, which has a peculiar but clearly understood set of\u00a0 driving protocols, was better than Boston.\u00a0 Boston’s got bad, nasty, aggressive drivers and crummy roads.\u00a0 Nothing worse than Boston.<\/p>\n Then I moved to the Inland Empire.<\/p>\n Rather than try to convince you by anecdote, see this report on road rage<\/a> by the Surface Transportation Policy Partnership.\u00a0 It’s out of date by now, but they measured deaths attributable to aggressive driving and the IE was the top-ranked metro area in the country.<\/p>\n It wasn’t even close; measured in deaths per 100,000 people, the Inland Empire scored 13.4 while second-ranked Tampa was at 9.5.\u00a0 New York City (including northern NJ) was 36th, with a score of 2.6, and Boston was 37th with 2.1.\u00a0 That is, drivers in the Inland Empire are six times<\/em> more aggressive than Boston drivers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How is it that highways can have personalities? The I-10\u00a0 in California changes character as it goes east from ocean.\u00a0 It’s a typical southern California multi-lane concrete freeway in Los Angeles that becomes\u00a0 something out of a Mad Max movie … Continue reading