Traffic Report

After much careful consideration and rational deliberation - which may or may not have included charts and graphs - I’ve come to the conclusion that the Twin Cities traffic report is a bunch of hogwash. (That’s a technical term for malarkey.) I think I always sort of knew, but this week it became abundantly clear in light of the snowstorm that blew into town.

But let me back up. Ever since I’ve moved to the Twin Cities, the traffic report has never once changed. The exact same four or five bad stretches are noted, with no variation, to the point where I wonder if they’re always replaying the same report from 1983, just to see how long they can go before somebody catches on.

Now, how helpful is that? Every day I’m told that 94 is jammed going into the Lowry Hill tunnel. Well, duh. Everybody who’s ever driven that stretch at rush hour knows it’s going to happen, so why even report it in the first place? Shouldn’t the traffic report tell you something that’s out of the ordinary? (“Miraculously, nobody is driving in the left lane ten miles an hour below the speed limit! It's like somebody Photoshopped real life!”)

In addition, I'm always told what highways are bad, but never how to avoid them. That’s sort of like telling somebody they’re on fire and refusing to dump water on them. I can see when I’m stuck in traffic! I know it because that’s when I’m driving two miles an hour, cursing like a sailor, and wishing that the country music played on the radio wasn’t so horrible these days. I don’t need any help with that! What I want is a way out, like the secret tunnel Homer got to use when he was a Stonecutter. But does the traffic report help me out? Nope!

That leads up to this week, when a storm dumped a fairly large amount of snow on the area, which basically paralyzed all traffic to the point where it was about as productive as Congress. That afternoon, as I was sitting on the freeway, a sea of brake lights stretched out in front of me, the traffic report came on. Aha! I though. This should finally be different!

But it wasn’t. It was exactly the same as usual.

Now how does that work? Not one car in entire metro is going over twenty-five, and the traffic report still doesn’t change? It they wanted to be honest, they should have just said: “Don’t even bother getting into your car. It will be faster to walk. Or crawl. Or wait for an earthquake to displace you.”

So I’ve given up on traffic reports. But that’s just fine, because there are traffic apps that can be used instead, which boast the added bonus of making you an even worse driver, since you’ll be too preoccupied checking on an accident to watch the road, which is when you’ll discover that the accident is actually you, since you were too busy playing on your phone to notice that you rear-ended a semi.

Anyway, the moral of the story is that I need to start working from home. Or become a Stonecutter. Suggestion on how I can accomplish either would be appreciated.