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Sep 03, 2010
Thought Experiments

50 Percent Less

Post by admin

A thought experiment:

What if you took anywhere from one third to one half of the commuters off the road each and every workday? How would that change things?

Well for starters, your commute would be far more pleasant, whether you were a driver or not. Congestion and delays wouldn’t be nearly as harsh as they are today. If you were a transit rider, you might even get a seat on the subway.

Fifty  years ago that would’ve been the case. After all, back then only one person commuted to work in a formal workplace. He – of course – was the breadwinner, but the housewife provided labour in an informal economy of child-rearing, food preparation, tailoring and perhaps a small home-based business making and selling what-have-yous.

And remember: That informal economy was impossible to track and thus, tax free.

That’s not to say that a woman’s place is in the home. Far from it. It’s just to say that maybe the home is the place for half of a household’s economic activity, whether it’s generated by man or woman.

Were that the case, we’d have a lot fewer cars on the road and riders on the subway.

Maybe our traffic and transit problems have nothing to do with roads and wheels and rights-of-way. Maybe traffic isn’t the horrible disease we make it out to be. Maybe it’s the symptom of something far more troublesome than itself.

If so, we’ve got to stop worrying about the symptom and go after the disease directly, whatever it may be.

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3 Comments

  • BrianTH says:

    I’m not quite sure where this post was going, but I’ve seen this sort of argument offered in favor of shorter work-weeks, telecommuting, and more generous gender-neutral parental leave.

  • Jeffrey Bridgman says:

    Interesting 🙂

  • LX says:

    Yes, 50 years ago. I’d like to live in that time… I think.

    For our time: I’d like to see the actual capacity of our roads for statistics. Because after all it seems like back then they’ve made pretty good decisions. I mean: traffic is still working… maybe at peak at some locations its overloaded. But all the other times it seems to me it is pretty good working. And you can not say that about buildings being built at the same time. That is interesting.
    Then I keep reading Canada’s biggest city has problems with the public transportation. (I read about some holes or lines being filled due introduction of bus lines, am I right?)
    I may be totally wrong but I still believe during the process of analysing situations and calculating options you will reach a point telling you whether you should go there, because it is the best option or SIMPLY not.

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