This picture was taken at 7:10 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on a Wednesday morning. I am roughly 3.5 miles away from my final destination, and it will take me 30 minutes to traverse a stretch of road that would ordinarily take just under four, if traveling at the legal speed limit of 55 mph. It is not the fact that this was exceptionally bad that serves as the impetus of this post, it’s the fact that this is absolutely ordinary that it does.
Actually, that’s not entirely true, because I’ve seen endured it worse before, many, many times. These electronic signs scattered insufficiently throughout the outskirts of the Metro Atlanta area are harbingers of dread and symbols of ineptitude. 15-17 actually isn’t bad, as it’s usually 24-26 most of the time, and if there’s absolutely any precipitation, it’s 38-40; the general rule is to add 10-12 minutes to that, which is a more accurate estimation. And if there’s an accident, it’s guaranteed to occur right under the sign, so that there’s absolutely zero chance of you knowing there’s an accident in advance and detour, and that you’ll see the sign just as you’re approaching the calamity.
Just once, during a particularly bad morning, I’d like to simply see it say “YOU’RE FUCKED.”
Somewhere over the course of the last six or seven years, the concept of people working 9-to-5 seems to have vanished, and much to my dismay, has headed in the same direction that I typically prefer to go if the opportunity is there – earlier. I’m realizing more and more, with every passing day with crippling traffic long before the sun can even rise, that the catastrophic part of the morning rush hour is when the clock leads with a 7, and that this is pretty much the norm now.
Over the course of the last two weeks, I’ve been leaving the house extra early, since I haven’t been carpooling, and I want to beat the rush, get to work early so that I can leave work early. The time in which I’ve been leaving the house is comparable to when I used to leave the house back in 2007 when I worked in the financial district, which isn’t that far from where I work now. The difference however is completely flipped from how it was back then, because in 2007, traffic was sparse, and I would roll into work around 7:30 with almost no complications on a regular basis. As opposed to today, where traffic is mind-numbingly crippling, and where “a good day” is one less mile half-mile quarter-mile minute of congestion before you inevitably hit the wall of cars, completely stopped.
At first, I thought it was an aberration, and that this couldn’t possibly be the norm. The sun wasn’t up, Metro Atlanta schools weren’t even in operation yet, and that it was simply “too early” for people to be up in arms to get to work yet. But with each passing day of dealing with the same shit different day, the harrowing realization began to sink in that this is how people are operating these days.
The sad thing seems to be that with people getting to work earlier, that people should be leaving work earlier, but I think it’s safe to say that that’s not necessarily true either. Traffic at 5-6 p.m. on any given day is still as much of a catastrophe heading home as it has devolved into when hitting the streets at 3-4 p.m. I literally take a completely different route home in the evenings due to the horrendous traffic at night.
Ironically, earlier in the week, we carpooled once, but the tradeoff was leaving the house substantially later than I would if I were on my own. Sure, I ended up being a little tardy overall, but the thing was that by the time we got to the point of the commute where the leading picture was taken, the congestion was rated back to 13-15 at like 8:45 a.m. Maybe that was an abnormality for that particular day, but also maybe it wasn’t. The bottom line was that traffic was noticeably lighter at a time when traffic is perceived to be at its utmost worst.
It very well could be the case that the old traditional rush-periods between 8-9 a.m. have given way to 7-8 a.m., and if so, it’s not necessarily a bad idea to try and work my way into a 10-6 kind of workday schedule. But that’s simply not me; I prefer to be earlier rather than later, and especially in an office environment, where I can write out some convoluted reasons why, but it’s easiest to simply chalk up that anyone who’s worked in a stuffy office environment should understand why I say such.
Suffice to say, I’d like to reiterate, somewhere over the last few years, something has gone terribly wrong, and it doesn’t look like any fixes or changes are going to happen any time soon.
