Letter from Silicon Valley – Part II

In Silicon Valley you don’t talk much about the weather (which is always roughly the same). Instead, you small-talk about the 101: ‘So how was traffic today?’. ‘D’you see any accidents?’. Highway 101 is Silicon Valley’s notorious spine, consuming as much as 3 hours of a commuter’s life – daily.

The 101 connects all major cities in the Bay area, and encompasses a collection of 4 to 5 lanes in each direction (north-south, and vice-versa), with exits (off-ramps) and entries (on-ramps), generally on the right-most lane, but sometimes on the left-most lane (this makes sense, right?). Sometimes you’ll have ramp-meter entries (traffic lights to control the input traffic). Sometimes you’ll find a car-pool lane on the left-most side. Car-pool lanes are particularly interesting: since their traffic is lighter, you will want to use them as often as possible. However, only ‘ecologically sensible’ traffic is allowed on them. So either you’re driving a hybrid, or a fully electric vehicle, or else you have at least one other person with you in your car. The usage of the car-pool lane needs to be well planned: you will need at least 2 miles to cross all the 4 lanes over to the car-pool lane, and then another 2 miles (or more, to be safe) to exit on the right. If you miss your exit, it’s really not so cool, because you’ll have to take the next off-ramp, make a u-turn, and get back onto the 101… There’s no way around it.

Apparently, around 1999, after the dot-com bubble burst, traffic was much lighter. But recent years have seen the local Californian economy blaze away, attracting lots of new tech talent. I wonder if the tech crowd realize how much more productive the valley would be with a better transport solution.

Hyperloop – we’re waiting for you.