The Societal Costs of Traffic Congestion

Or, yet another reason to be a fan of Columbus!  When I lived in Atlanta, I and many of my peers were keenly attuned to the time of day, the witching hour, and when you had to get going to beat traffic or have a good podcast, audio book or XM satellite radio access to brave the mind-numbing wilderness that can be much of Atlanta’s traffic.  Ok, having been a consultant, I know mega city traffic.  Newark, NY, LA’s 405, SF, etc. ain’t got nuthin’ on the ATL’s particular flavor of gridlock.

When I as at IBM and actually working in the town I resided in (a rarity, to be sure!), I carpooled with my best friend, Saul, and a good friend, Anthony, for we all had to get from North East Atlanta (Norcross and Duluth in Gwinnett) to central North West Atlanta (Marietta) on the perimeter.  Spending far too many hours stuck in Atlanta traffic gave us many opportunities to bemoan GA Tech engineering (they are supposedly responsible for traffic planning), central planning and what was wrong with the American Dream and why trains had seemingly gone the way of of buggies.

Being environmentally conscientious as we were (that was Saul’s early major at MIT) and being ecologically minded, we were at least philosophically “green” before we knew what that sort of green meant.  Good intentions not-withstanding, we probably were a net negative impact on the environment anyway as we opted for the luxury, height, power, tunes and aggressive driving facilitated by my early SUV Jeep Grand Cherokee vs. Saul’s BMW or Anthony’s Volvo.  Whether it is boats, planes, trains, trucks, scooters or bikes, the societal costs of traffic congestion are huge.  Idle transport, in fact, un-used or under-utilized capacity of manufactured goods or services is incredibly expensive either in actual costs or opportunity costs.

Like so many things in life, such analysis is a bit of a double-edged sword.  We oft spoke (and dreamed) of those lucky enough to land the occasional telecommuting gig.  While helping local commuters spend more quality time at home, it allowed for the globalization and off-shoring of so many so-called “white collar” jobs.  Truly a Macro topic.  New Benefits in one sector, Freidman’s flat-world view proved to be a boon to the telecommunications and technology providers and while placing more hidden costs elsewhere in the economy.