New Southern Dad: Thoughts on traffic

The city of Atlanta is known for a lot of things, but none more so than its traffic. 

The Phoenix City consistently ranks as the worst place in the country when it comes to the daily commute of the people who live and work there. Coincidently, Atlanta has the largest ratio of tree coverage of any city, so at least it feels like you’re in nature while actually rotting away in the driver’s seat. 

According the internet insurance broker The Zebra, about an extra 33 hours per year is spent in the car by Atlanta drivers than their counterparts in other urban areas. The average commute in Hotlanta (the city also has a lot nicknames) is about 33 minutes each way. And that’s only to go a mile or two down the street. 

To make matters worse, Georgia has one of the highest rates of fatal car crashes at about 16 per every 100,000 people per year. And the drive time is only getting worse. Last year over 200 minutes were added to the rush hour commute time. 

I’m not sure how this data is collected, probably cell phone tracking. What an age to be alive, when the little computer in our pocket can tell us exactly how long we’ve been sitting on the downtown connector. Or maybe there’s a man with a telescope on top of the Bank of America Plaza counting cars every morning and afternoon. It’s a hell of a way to make a living, but it’s honest work.   

I can vouch for A-Town’s terrible traffic, though my experience was more than a decade ago. In another life I was one of those daily commuters, strapped into an automobile sitting idle in a sea of brake lights under the haze of exhaust-polluted air. The side effects of sitting in traffic include elevated stress levels, physical and mental strain, high blood pressure and, of course, breathing in those noxious vehicle fumes, not to mention the abuse from verbal drivers, car horns and the obnoxious music coming from one lane over. 

The job that had me sitting in the car more than I was working didn’t last long. I didn’t even look for a new line of employment, but abandoned my post as soon as I was financially able. Shortly thereafter, I fled the ATL altogether and returned to my rural nativity never to sit in daily traffic again. 

What a fool I was.

A new town should be topping the traffic list, sleepy little Dudley, Georgia. And it’s all thanks to the carpool line at the elementary school. Schools only been in session for a few weeks and each endeavor to pick up my child has taken no less than 30 minutes. No matter how I plan arrival, early or late, I’m stuck in a long line of cars, sometimes stretched beyond the city limits. I think some people drop off their child and then immediately claim a spot in the pick up line.

I lay the blame at no one but myself. I think it’s a little cosmic payback for the foul words uttered under my breath, horn honked at a slow driver ahead of me and fist shaken at the stand-still traffic of my youth. 

Payback is a you-know-what, and I’d better get comfortable in the driver’s seat again.