A traffic expert offers smart answers to our stupid questions about impending traffic trauma
By Rose Martelli
Photograph by Sarah Carmody
The end is finally upon us—the end of Highway 40 as we know it, that is. How on earth will we survive? We asked Shawn Leight, senior traffic engineer at Crawford Bunte Brammeier (a firm that’s working on the massive road reconstruction) and an adjunct professor of civil engineering at Washington University, for some pseudo-scientific guidance.
Where would you rank the upcoming construction and congestion insanity among the 10 plagues of Egypt? Maybe about third. I think people are going to find creative ways to deal with it. Some will obviously change their usual driving routes, but I think you’ll also see people negotiating to work off-peak hours or to work from home once a week. Then there will be those who might have to take up meditation.
When your lane is ending, shouldn’t you move over right away? I hate it when people ride it out to the very end. When you decide to merge isn’t as important. I think it would be best if everybody just did the same thing, whether it’s to merge right away or at the end. You get people pretty hot under the collar when everybody’s trying to be courteous and follow the same rules, and then a guy like me who’s late for a meeting comes along and tries to “cut the line.”
I’ve heard traffic compared to a Slinky. What’s that all about? It’s like shock waves. Anybody in the Army can tell you this, too. When they march or run in formation, the guys in the first line will go at a constant pace, but if you’re the poor sucker at the back, you start and stop a lot.
Let’s talk about rubbernecking. Why do you think St. Louisans find other people’s bad days so fascinating? Human nature. I think people feel that if they’ve had to sit in gridlocked traffic for 20 minutes, they deserve a peek at the mess as much as every guy in front of them.
Mayor Slay has dismissed our collective traffic worries as comparable to the panic preceding the pope’s visit in 1999. Isn’t it time to pray now? One thing that’s important to understand is that there’s a big psychological element to all of this, kind of like the stock market. It will impact everybody in different ways—some directly, some indirectly—so we’re all going to have to make different choices.
Pop quiz: If a man leaves the Kingshighway interchange traveling west at 15 mph and a woman leaves the Brentwood interchange traveling east at 20 mph, at what point will both scream, “Screw this!” and drive their cars off the road? I’d say probably at Hampton they’re going to say, “Screw it!” and head to the park. Hopefully it’s a nice day.
