Getting 'Stuck In Traffic': The Absurd Inefficiency Of Car Culture

Why do we continue to do this to ourselves?

A sort of funny account of the lunacy that illustrates the way we—predominantly—choose to organize ourselves in the United States.

But first—a couple quick housekeeping notes.

If you’re a free subscriber, particularly one who rarely opens these emails (but just so happened to this time), never engages or, for one reason or another, has yet to upgrade to a paid subscription, do something.

Soon.

Please.

Because I'm starting from the beginning and deleting many of the free accounts that fall in one of these three categories. Except for free subscribers who have signed up in the last six months. This will give me a more accurate gauge of open rates and a true free-to-paid subscriber ratio.

Second, as you might know, we have our one-way ticket to Spain booked for January 2nd. We're less than six months away from leaving Los Angeles (and car culture) for good.

Next week, I plan to email the person who will submit the visa application on our behalf to let her know our plans and request a checklist of the things we should be doing between now and the end of the year.

This will help guide the process and set up not only what we have to do, but what I'll be writing about throughout 2024. Then—literally right when 2025 starts—you'll receive the day-to-day, blow-by-blow of life, on the ground, in Spain.

Therefore, if you're free, it's time to pay to subscribe. And, if you don't have a lifetime, founding membership, it's time to upgrade. (Don't worry, I manually convert all founding memberships to comped lifetime subscriptions).

The other day on the way home from the beach, we found ourselves at this intersection in Manhattan Beach, California. We were in the left turn lane parallel to the Trader Joe’s grocery store you see on Manhattan Beach Boulevard. The plan was to do a u-turn and pick up a few things at Trader Joe’s.

Here’s the visual, as things slowly progressed (!), from our car—

Then, as we (actually, I) inched toward the intersection where I could make the u-turn on the green left turn arrow.

Such a barren and depressing landscape so close to the pretty amazing one we had experienced for several hours just a few minutes earlier.

I said I, not we earlier because right before I got up to the positon you see in the first picture, I said to Melisse—

I bet it will take less time for you to jump out of the car, cross the street, get what we need at Trader Joe’s and come out than it will for us to take our turn at the left turn arrow, make a u-turn, park and go in.

So, she got out of the car so we could test my assumption.

Not so long story short, after I finally made the u-turn, I parked alongside Trader Joe’s on the street, got out of the car and, as I walking toward the store entrance, Melisse was walking out, having completed our errand.

Pretty incredible if you ask me!

I wasn’t necessarily in a hurry, even if a little hungry and a lot thirsty. It’s more that I’m just weird like this.

As we inched and idled, I thought, how patently absurd. I mean, I can look to the left and, roughly, the length of a basketball court away is the place where we want to go. Yet, we’re sitting here helpless—foolishly really, like idiots—waiting to go through this wholly inefficient process simply because this is what we and pretty much everybody else does. This is what a whole host of theys has prescribed for us and we follow—thoughtlessly and uncritically—like sheep.

It’s the biggest quality of life issue in America that very few recognize or treat seriously enough as a quality of life issue.

It’s one thing if you live in the country or out in some other equally as wide open space. There’s something romantic—even freeing and certainly efficient—about getting in a car to run errands. But the way we do it in most of heavily and relatively heavily populated America. It’s just plain dumb.

My driver’s license expires on July 18, 2025. On what will be my 50th birthday. From that point on, my plan is to never have a driver’s license again. I’m done with this inanity.

Quality of life goes from zero to 100 in less than a few seconds when everything you need is within a short walk or bike ride.

Yet, we have people who actually believe that this style of urban planning—which is how it used to be everywhere back in the old days and still is in our great cities—is a liberal conspiracy to control the masses. And it’s not just in the United States.

Get a load of this story out of Canada, which is almost as ass backwards as the US.

We’re fucked.

The policy and accompanying plans divide the city into 15 districts, replacing a patchwork of individual neighbourhood plans, some of which are decades old.

Council passed second reading of the district policy in a 10-2 vote Tuesday afternoon along with an amendment noting that the plans would not restrict the movement of Edmontonians.

The amendment, moved by Coun. Aaron Paquette and seconded by Mayor Amarjeet Sohi, passed with a 12-0 vote.

It reads as follows: "The District Policy and the District Plans shall not restrict freedom of movement, association, and commerce in accordance with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms …”

In Edmonton's City Plan, adopted in 2020, districts are a collection of neighbourhoods with the goal of meeting most residents' daily needs within a 15-minute walk, bike or transit trip from their home …

"It's disappointing that we're here today, that we even have to put this in this document," Coun. Erin Rutherford said. 

"Quite frankly, it shows an erosion of trust in our democracy as a whole, I think. And that's really sad."

Happy Canada Day and Fourth of July!

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