On my morning commute to Salem, I noticed the OPB traffic report saying that traffic was slow in Delta Park on I-5 and that, paraphrased "Your commute will be an additional 19 minutes." Which made me wonder: what's the baseline?
What physical length of commute are they expecting (as most people using the I-5 corridor aren't traveling the full distance), and what time? Are they comparing it to an average day's rush hour commute, which they should, or a commute with no other cars on the road, which I bet they are? (There are side issues about presuming people are driving, and the strange psychology where people communicate about distance in time, i.e. "I live 10 minutes away," that deserve other ponderings.)
If traffic reports were honest, they'd report on days where your commute would be faster than average, but I have yet to hear one say "Your commute will be 7 minutes faster than average."
Setting car-free, congestion-free road speeds as the baseline creates a sort of perverse sense of the world, that drivers believe that they deserve to drive as fast as possible. Which then creates political pressure for overinvestments in hugely expensive projects like the $5000-per-household, $4.2 billion MegaBridge.
OPB, step up and lead on this. Change your traffic reports. You've done it before when people complained about warning lawbreakers about enforcements on the carpool lane. Time to do it again.
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