BeigeJournal

In yesterday’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Road Warrior column a reader by the name of Knuth writes in, “I travel U.S. Highway 45 southbound every day, and am aggravated almost every day because traffic slows down to 45 mph from Burleigh St. to Watertown Plank Road.” Columnist Larry Sandler tells us that according to Kelly Langer, state freeway operations supervisor, the poor sight lines around the curve, merging traffic from the North Ave. on ramp, and backups extending back from the Zoo Interchange cause this slowdown.

I travel this road many days as well, when I drive my car to work rather than cycling. I too have noticed a frequent slowdown in this area. I, however, am not “aggravated” to be slowed all the way down to 45 mph for a short distance during rush hour. It just isn’t an issue in my life. If you ask me, Knuth needs to learn to relax a bit.

Actually measuring the time consumed in travel on different routes and under different conditions would probably help, too. That slowdown by North Ave. is not where the time is going. Two miles at 55 vs. two miles at 45 is about half a minute. My commute by car takes 20 minutes. How would I even know if I was delayed by half a minute?

My commute by bicycle takes around 40 minutes. How many people would guess that uncongested highway, on a short trip where the highway is most of the distance but getting to and from the highway takes a considerable portion of the time, is only twice as fast as bicycling? Either way, your speed while stopped at a red light is zero. The difference is far greater if you get on the highway and stay on it until you get to Ohio. That’s a lot faster than cycling. I’ve actually averaged 55 mph between refuelings on the way to OVFF, but my long-term average speed over all my driving (currently about 500 hours since I put the Hobbs meter in) is around 30 mph.

I have this feeling that many people’s subjective impression of speed is but loosely correlated with actual speed. That would explain all those people who tailgate me for a while (it feels faster if you are tailgating, I guess), and then pass me with rapid acceleration until, well, they catch up to the next car in the left lane (going the same speed I am), and then tailgate him, and so traveling at exactly the same speed as before but now in front of me, and thus eligible for valuable prizes just as soon as we reach that elusive finish line with the checkered flag.