Why Driving In My Town Blows

"joemcm" (JoeMcMullen) 02/14/2014 at 18:22 • Filed to: The Commuting Problem

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After reading !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! lovely posts about commuting, I decided to comment on the toils of commuting in my hometown. After a moment at the keyboard, I realized there was so much to complain about, that I needed to compose a post myself. Please feel free to vent some about your area in the comments, because misery loves company and it is Valentine's Day.

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I'm from Lexington, KY and the infrastructure there is fucked beyond repair. Think of a city of 300,000+ people primarily made up of suburbs with a small downtown area where nearly everyone works. The University of Kentucky, all the hospitals, all the big banks and innumerable businesses are located downtown. Most people who work there live in the suburban areas and need to make it downtown for work around 8:00am. This may seem like a normal situation to most, but the roads in my beloved home town make this an actually hellish situation. Lexington is laid out like a spoked wheel:

What makes this seemingly efficient layout hell on earth each morning and night is the horrendous cocktail of the location of most housing developments and the complete lack of limited access roads leading into town. Most of Lexington's suburban housing is between the "hub" and the "rim" of the wheel, but there are many outside of the "rim." This wouldn't be an issue but all the "spokes" of the wheel are fucked and have a stoplight at almost every 4-way intersection. Why is this you ask? Because for some odd reason, every time there's an accident in Lexington, our government promptly responds by putting in a stoplight at said location. If the accidents persist, as they always do, a red arrow is added to the stoplight because red arrows make everything better. To make matters worse, the south end of the road encircling the perimeter of downtown, creating the "hub" of this wheel is the only limited access road in town. Each of the major "spokes" have an intersection to get on the limited access road so people can make zero progress into town and pointlessly go around in a circle from spoke to spoke. Most of the entries to this road are laid out pretty normally, but with stoplights of course. For some peculiar reason, everyone decided that there were too many accidents at one of these intersections, so they came up with this bright idea:

Could someone please find and waterboard whoever decided this needed to be a thing? They said it would cut down on accidents, they said it would improve traffic flow, they said it was a great way to spend all the stimulus money we got. I say it's a colossal failure that accomplished a handful idiotic, counter-productive goals. If you were turning right onto Harrodsburg from the New Circle exit, you used to be able to simply see if anyone was coming and go, as it is everywhere else in the fucking universe. Now you must sit at a light, even if turning right. In its heyday, Harrodsburg Road was one of the best routes into town. Lights were uncharacteristically sparse for Lexington, so traffic flowed like your diarrhea after some bad Mexican food. Someone along the way thought it would be a fantastic idea to implement a classic bottleneck immediately after the part where you have to drive on the wrong side of the road, making trying to get through that intersection a total shitshow.

So if you want to get downtown, you should cut through the neighborhoods, right? Wrong, the neighborhoods are peppered with elementary schools, which create gargantuan clusterfucks everywhere within a 1/2 mile radius of each school. Can the school traffic be avoided? Why heavens no! Everywhere there isn't a school there's the inevitable 5,000,000 bus stops along the way, since every time a child has to walk more than a 1/4 mile, their mommy worries they'll freeze to death or have a heat stroke depending on the season. So that leaves your average Lexingtonian no choice but to endure a tiresome, 2-3 mile, 40 minute journey into town, regardless of the route.

So how do the locals do at navigating these treacherous roads? Let's just say poorly. Most of these horrendous "updates" to our infrastructure have taken place within the last 20 years or so. Therefore, nobody in town has a fucking clue how to drive in traffic. You might say, "Well Joe, it's like that everywhere, so just suck it up and quit your bitching." First off, no I will not quit my bitching, it's fun and I like it.

Now, to those of you inclined to feel this way, I have an argument as to why Lexington's drivers are particularly shitty. First of all, everyone and their sister has a pickup. No, not the nice small trucks they get everywhere else in the world, but the good ol' Murican trucks we've all come to know and hate. This is Kentucky after all, and in spite of our best efforts at civilization, our culture is still saturated with overly-masculine redneckishness. Therefore, the people who buy enormous trucks and put confederate flags on all their belongings (side note: anyone who passed middle school history should know that Kentucky was in fact NOT in the Confederacy. Many people here refuse to believe this.) to look like the bad ass farmers they wish they were also drive like they're head fucking honcho everywhere they go.

Now we move to the vast majority of commuters in Lexington: dick-headed businessmen who think they're head fucking honcho. I say businessmen because I haven't noticed many women driving like they have a debilitating inferiority complex, but I digress. These characters tend to drive a variety of vehicles, but most choose the Toyota Camry, but not because they couldn't afford something nicer, only because they want to support the local economy... or at least that's what they tell their friends with Audis when they pull up in their beigemobile. (Fun Fact: Camries are manufactured just north of Lexington in Georgetown, KY) All these mid-level management types set out each morning to cut off and almost sideswipe as many people as possible on their way to work. No, not because racecar, because asshole.

That leaves us with another traffic loving demographic, the parent taking their child to school. Usually these motorists don't cause much trouble on the roads. After all, there's precious cargo on board! Luckily for them and their youngsters, the only risk they run on the road is getting rear-ended by some bombastic redneck in a truck or some needle-dick bank teller who thinks he's fucking Jordan Belfort. But let's not be too quick to judge these demographics I mentioned earlier. The folks on their way to drop their kids off to school do their part to make everyone else's drive shitty. We often bitch and moan about the way people ignore lane designations and in Lexington, most roads heading into town have three lanes heading each direction. Many right-hand turns don't have those nifty run-off areas leading into the turn, so the right-hand lane is for people about to turn right, the middle is for people to get where they're going and the left is for passing and those planning to turn left in the near future. If a car packed with children is planning to turn left, you can be damn sure they're in the left lane at least a mile before their turn, likely going 5 below because they're yelling at their kids for yelling. As we all know, this is never a good thing and successfully fucks everyone else on the road. To make matters worse, many of these parents are actually the Napoleon Syndrome riddled businessmen mentioned earlier, only blinded by love for their child. Immediately after dropping off their kiddos, their true identity is revealed and they proceed to bob and weave through each lane, making no progress, endangering us all and being forced to stop at a light every 20 seconds like the rest of us.

The third and final demographic sadly is the quietest one, but gives me hope in humanity. These people are the good drivers. They're few and far between, but each one you encounter on your trip through the inferno each morning will make your drive better. They let people in their lane, but only when appropriate, they understand that no matter what, their drive is going to take a while, so they settle in, accept their fate, and get to work.

I'm sure many of you live in places with horrific commutes. Lexington is just a particularly infuriating place because given the size of the city, the width of the roads and the number of ways into town, logic says our traffic should flow just like beer through the funnel we keep in the fraternity house shower. None the less, poorly executed civil engineering and bad drivers of all walks of stupidity continue to bone our nice little city's traffic situation. Luckily, my area is littered with glorious driving roads tucked away out in the horse country. Every time I think all hope is lost, and driving can't be fun anymore, I get in my car, endure the stoplights for a few short miles and make my way to the country to restore my faith in the beautiful act that is driving.

Arben72 > joemcm 02/14/2014 at 18:38

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$10 says you'd would get run off the road in Chicago. If your not bobbing and weaving through traffic there, your just simply going to sit there. Your also expected to stay 5 inches off someone bumper or someone is going to try and fit in that space. Don't forget your gas and brake pedals are on/off switches and there is no need to shorten your turn signal bulbs life by using them.

joemcm > Arben72 02/14/2014 at 18:46

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That's what I expected to hear, but there's 2.7 million people in Chicago, and I'm sure that doesn't include the greater metropolitan area. I feel your pain and imagine driving in a large city is a totally different ball game. The infuriating thing about Lexington is how small the city is, but how shitty the traffic is. I'm sure on big city interstates hopping lanes and driving fairly aggressively is helpful, but when there's stoplights everywhere, there's literally no point. I've tried hopping about and all that jazz here but it never amounted to shit. I realized you just need to accept the shittyness, try to stay in the middle lane as much as possible, and watch for idoits. You're going to stop soon anyways, if you're driving like that in Lexington, you're just contributing to the problem.

Volvosaurus-Rex > joemcm 02/14/2014 at 21:27

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Chicago, like most major cities forces you to give up the friendly Midwestern attitude if you expect to actually get where you're going. If you putz along and leave a space so you don't slam into the guy in front of you, usually a semi will insert itself into said space. If you choose to recreate that space, you will stop all forward progress and spend the day on the road.

joemcm > Volvosaurus-Rex 02/15/2014 at 17:07

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Yeah, you're in a different world up there. I'd hope I could adapt to that if ever forced to live in a big city.

GT40kinjaninja > joemcm 02/19/2014 at 01:30

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I agree. I live in the middle of Los Angeles. On my way to school I used to let people into my lane and use turn signals (oh stupid me). Then I realized I wasn't getting anywhere if I was always the nice guy. So now it's tough shit for the guy pulling into my lane. I just cut them off and keep going. People will stop traffic for miles just to cut into a line of traffic miles long for an exit. My horn is permanently attached to my hand. It has taken me 3 hours to go three miles. La traffic man...