I’ve been chugging through almost impossible traffic for the last 2 days. I changed routes each day (like a true scientist) but had more or less the same result.
It takes about 1 hour in the morning and almost 1 1/2 hours in the evening to get home. Its just a waste of time and money. Think of all the petrol we can save if we could go at about 60 kmph straight home in about 15 minutes like it does on a holiday or around 4am.
And to top it all off I have to look forward to the weekend cars. Don’t know what they are? Well those are the cars that sit at home all week and go out in the weekend. Its a good fuel saving strategy but more cars on the road doesn’t help.
At this point I would happily pay a toll if there was a highway or expressway, but that’s also wishful thinking in a dump like this.
Happy Weekend!
Update: I think part of the problem was the Highlevel road color lights in Nugegoda was out for the last 2 days, hope its fixed today.
You know all I want to do is write about technology. I don’t enjoy writing rants. Its very difficult to separate what you like from what you have to deal with on a daily basis. I will try to get over this crap and write about tech again, I promise
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You are not exactly off topic. There IS a science to studying traffic patterns – and its more complicated than it seems
– flow patterns and chaos theory and all that sort of thing.
This post clearly falls under the “science of the daily grind”.
Hope your weekend is going well
Well I hope they test some of these theories on our roads. For Sri Lanka more low tech solutions can be implemented if we have some people observe traffic in problem areas.
For example near Asiri Hospital there are a few turn offs. If we can limit cars from cutting across the road then we will have a better flow.
Lets say you want to turn into Asiri coming from Narahenpita. You should go past Asiri and do a U turn at the next island/tear drop roundabout and then do a left to Asiri.
Its all about flow. Maybe this needs more research and some diagrams.
I know what you mean
I use that road too.
There are also some external factors that I think clog up the whole system. Some off the cuff examples I can think of: the sewer leak on castle street is one. The other is the protest by angry train commuters that blocked a road during rush hour the last Friday.
Maybe this indicates that the Colombo traffic flow is easily affected by one or two small clogs or slow downs in the system. I’ve heard that LA and Mumbai has the same probs at a scale that makes Colombo traffic seem like a formula 1 race
Must be the butterfly effect (the movie was nice too) where small things effect larger changes. Also we are notoriously curious in slowing down for any old reason if there is something to look at by the side of the road.
I’m sure places like LA are constantly working on improving traffic flow using some high tech stuff. I noticed in Mumbai that yes it gets gridlocked at a time but they are building and expanding roads like mad.
I don’t see us doing either.