traffic — Bloggery — Touched with Fire Media

I was going to write an ambitious post about the many significant Julys 4 of my life this afternoon, but then I encountered a traffic jam. I suppose it’s evidence of my cossetted life that the traffic jam basically ceased to be a part of it when I moved out of California twelve years ago,* but the truth is I only really deal with them a couple times a year. Whenever I find myself in one there’s this sensation of — What? How is this possible? WHERE DID ALL THESE FUCKING PEOPLE COME FROM? DON’T YOU PEOPLE HAVE JOBS AND FAMILIES?! DON’T YOU HAVE ANYTHING TO DO OTHER THAN DRIVE YOUR CARS?!?!??!?!?!?!!? It doesn’t matter that they’re all saying the same stuff about me inside their own vehicles. The outrage wins. Every time it wins.

*Don’t quote me on that. Writing this blog has been a lesson in how quickly one’s memory erodes. You could tell me that I left California ten years ago or fifteen years ago and I’d go, “Yeah, that sounds right.” I remember when my parents would struggle with dates from their own lives I’d go, “Jesus, what happened to YOU? How do you not remember that?” I had no idea how hard it is to pack more memory into less space as you age and your brain ever-so-slightly decays.

This one started just as I hit PDX metro, headed north on I-5 having just taken a pleasurable, scenic drive over the North Santiam Pass from Bend. I had been contemplating idly the loveliness of the valley in summer, and thinking about the poetic things I would write about the various Julys 4 I have experienced. I was thinking about how to best convey the arresting complexity of my feelings about Independence Day, and patriotism, and America in general. Also, I was thinking about what song I would blast from my open windows as I came over the Ross Island Bridge.

That’s when I hit the wall of cars, inching along northward — into town in evening rush hour, which I found mystifying. Maybe if I were more familiar with driving around here, I’d understand why northbound traffic south of the city is terrible at getaway time — is everybody going to Vancouver? From Salem? Does this mean something troubling about where our state workers live? — but as it is, I was confounded, set adrift on a sea of traffic with all my outrage. All my poetry and complexity leaked out along with the steam shooting from my ears.

Now, I’m pretty wizardly with the streets of Portland’s east side, a result of years of trying to be cute with shortcuts. The shortcuts almost never work, but as a result of trying to take them I cannot get lost over there. I’m sure there’s a street or two on that side of the river I haven’t driven down, but they’re few and far between. But I was on I-5 south of the Marquam Bridge, stranded in the west-side suburbs, which might as well be the surface of the moon as far as I’m concerned. And so it was inch, inch, inch, and with each inch I became less the artist and more the grouchy old ass I’m daily turning into.

I know most people hate talking about traffic, and I’m sure all y’all didn’t care about my traffic story, but it’s been on my mind a lot lately. I’m curious about traffic, and interested in it — I’ve read books about it — but one thing that I’ve come to understand with expanded information is just how far I am from understanding it. This has turned out to be true with nearly every field, over the years. The more books I read the more I understand how many I’ll never read. The more I learn about baseball the more I see how little of it I’ll ever truly get. And the more traffic there is, the more I see how impossible it must be to fix.

I read Tom Vanderbilt’s book on the subject about a year ago,** and one of the things that really struck me about it is that we appear to be infinitely thirsty for freeways: build one up, say, SE Division Street from downtown to Gresham, and traffic actually won’t get any better on any of the other freeways in town — people will just drive more on the new one. It suppose there’s an eventual saturation point, but nobody has figured out what that is. Give us the opportunity to drive, and we’ll drive. Add a freeway and you won’t relieve a traffic jam — you’ll just create another.

**or rather, I listened to the audiobook

I use that example advisedly, of course, because in a couple of days I’m going to interview a guy named Jay Howell, who was one of the people who was on the ground for the Mt Hood Freeway fight forty years ago; that freeway would have shot straight up what is now (the very posh) Division Street and — no joke — plowed under the lot where my apartment building now sits. It’s hard to fathom.

The infinite yen for freeways is evident in archival reading I’ve done about the fight, by the way. People who supported the freeway didn’t seem to care about relieving the congestion downtown, which was the nominal reason for building the freeway — in interviews with The Oregonian, people repeatedly say they just want a fast way to get to work. The freeway revolt that prevented the construction of the freeway was uncannily prescient, it seems: the PDX of today, known for its smart planning (despite its mysterious traffic jams), is built on a foundation of good decisions taken for reasons somewhat orthogonal why the decisions were good. That I’m sitting here now in a beer bar on Division Street, as another rosy sunset crashes resplendent over the trees, the pedestrians, and the traffic, is basically a coincidence.