Author: Derek Beres / Source: Big Think
- Traffic has been implicated in measurable exhaustion, an increase in blood pressure, negative attitudinal shifts, and a constant release of stress hormones.
- In 2009, 3.9 billion gallons of fuel and 4.8 billion hours of time were wasted by Americans sitting in traffic.
- Traffic is costing the US economy $100 billion every year.
Shortly after moving to Santa Monica in 2011, I was scheduled to teach a class in West L.A. at 6 p.m. on a weekday. Leaving my apartment at 4:30, which was located two miles from the club, I planned on getting an hour workout in before class started.
I was wrong.
The only reason I was able to rush into the club by 6 p.m. was because I drove the wrong way down a one-way service road to cut in front of a few blocks of traffic. If that option hadn’t become available I was about to park and sprint the remaining blocks, under the bridge of the 405, the source of my disdain.
Ninety minutes to travel two miles might seem like an outlier in Los Angeles. While at the extreme end, it’s not unheard of. A former eight-mile commute never took less than an hour.
Before moving to L.A., I was warned about how often people talked about traffic. How you get around is woven into the fabric of the culture. In a city dominated by Instagram celebrities posting fad workouts and sponsored branded content to a population obsessed with fitness and healthy food, the irony is stark: traffic is terrible for our health.
The Californians: Stuart Has Cancer (Dress Rehearsal) – SNL
Yet it’s especially terrible in L.A.
As Austin Frakt writes in the NY Times, the average American sits in rush-hour traffic for forty-two hours a year. In this city that number is roughly double. The lost time and wasted fuel expenses cost the nation $100 billion every year — and that report is from 2010.
According to that mobility research, in 2009, 3.9 billion gallons of fuel were wasted, alongside 4.8 billion hours of time, because of traffic. Tesla and others are trying to solve the first part of that problem, but time lost is damaging to our psyches as well:
“Persons who lived in areas with greater vehicular burden and who reported the most traffic stress also had the lowest health status and greatest depressive symptoms. These findings suggest that traffic…
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