Traffic you can use

I don't like to get too pet peeve-y, at least not too often, so I haven't written before about traffic reports. I don't quite get why they're so important (at least they are in Chicago), because there are rarely good alternatives. My suburb was once a farm community, so it was pretty self-contained except for the train line to Chicago (used mainly to ship furniture). The major businesses were those that were needed internally, like commercial stores and the hospital and the schools.

As a result, there are simply not a lot of direct roads here from the big city. There is Ogden Avenue, a busy stop-and-go roadway that travels through several commercial districts and is ill-suited for actual travel. And there is I-88, part of the Interstate Highway System.

So, if you're coming to or from Chicago, and there's a problem on 88, well, too bad, that's still going to be the best game in town. They'd have to pretty much close the highway for an hour to make taking anything else worth the delay.

Therefore, traffic reports are largely irrelevant to anyone living in my area, and the same is true for a lot of the other suburbs around Chicago. Yet, traffic reporting seems to become more important all the time, and I've learned to live with it.

However...

I heard a traffic report on our local news radio station the other day introduced with, "Getting you home safe and sound...." That sounds good, and I'm sure it's the kind of thing that sounds warm and audience-friendly, but it's such nonsense. If you want to get people home safe and sound, you should put them on the most crowded roads you can find. You're way safer driving at 5 mph than speeding along at 75. The objective of the report is to get you home fast, not safe. That illusion, that it's helping you do that, is the source of its attraction, but it's pretty weak.

Well, I've read over the preceding, and it sounds a bit more curmudgeonly than I like to think I am, but heck, let's put it up anyway.

Transparency (again)

The comment-ocracy (I don't like "blogosphere" because it doesn't include enough; there are plenty of professional bloviators who bring little more to the table) is atwitter because the automakers came back to Washington and offered up plans with little substance. Andrew Sullivan points us to posts by Jim Manzi, Joseph Romm, and Matt Yglesias, and the consensus of these (and, it seems, many others) is that the Big 3 didn't offer real plans, that these were profoundly unserious attempts; some have even termed them "political" business plans.

Golly, what did we expect? I mean, really expect. Did we believe that the auto companies were going to lay out their future strategies in exacting detail, including precise plans for closing plants and jettisoning workers? Should they have gotten together and parceled out the new-energy strategies (OK, Bob, you guys take biofuels, we'll stick with flex, and we'll let Ford pursue the nuclear car, snicker, snicker)?

I wrote about the general concept of transparency a couple of months ago, and I'm sure there's more that can be said. Businesses don't, and shouldn't, believe that transparency is what their business is all about. Real business plans have to remain secret; otherwise, there's no competitive advantage to be gained. I wouldn't invest in a transparent company, as it would have no way to gain through their specialized knowledge.

Furthermore, these auto CEOs aren't stupid. They recognize that the sentiment, at least in a fearful ignorant Congress, is leaning toward helping them out. All they have to do is give a little, flesh out some generalized, semi-technical "business plans," and our legislators will cave. The first time they came to Washington, they offered nothing but need. The second time, they say, look, we tried, we told you stuff, and the effort, no matter how minimal, is seen as significant.

And this was all predictable, and easy to foresee, and should not engender the least bit of surprise or outrage...but, to the comment-ocracy, it does - when do we realize that they're as much captives of "conventional wisdom" as everyone else?

Jam-ups

I had to make a quick trip to Michigan on Thursday (it wasn't really all that quick). Taking I-94 across the state was interesting, because the good people of Michigan made a decision that, on the face of it, probably made a lot of sense. The speed limit most of the way on this two-lane highway (something I've never really gotten is how we talk about lanes; I guess I mean "four-lane highway," because there are two in each direction, but what do I care, I only have two lanes to worry about - the other side could have six lanes, making it an eight-lane highway, and that wouldn't do me a bit of good, would it?) is 70 for passenger cars, 60 for trucks.

Given the added danger of trucks, their increased energy, it may well be prudent to enforce a lower speed limit on them. But what happens in reality is, if there is sufficient truck traffic (and it would appear there is always sufficient truck traffic on I-94), they totally inhabit the right lane. Even if there are n times as many cars as trucks, the cars are effectively all shoved into the left lane (I use n because I don't know the right number). In effect, two traffic lanes become one, and car traffic can really get backed up.

In Illinois, there are no effective differences in the speed limits. Oddly enough, officially there are, something that has caused controversy in the past, but I've been driving here for years and have rarely seen any real difference. Of course, as I drive mostly in the Chicago area, rarely do I drive on highways in which there are only two lanes in each direction.

It's hard for me to believe that there isn't more risk in the split speed limits. If you try to drive correctly, that is, keep the left lane clear except to pass, then you're constantly changing lanes as you come up on slow-moving trucks. I saw several cars on I-94, drivers of which were obviously in a big hurry, weave in and out, skirting bumpers - does this strike anyone as safer than having the trucks and cars at the same speed? Sure didn't look like it to me.