Commuters' wasted time in traffic costs $121B

http://news.yahoo.com/commuters-wasted-time-traffic-costs-121b-060227096.html

It is the rare person who has ever agreed with me on this but it seems obvious to me.

While government inefficiency is easy to find most things where government is involved, my dad pointed out an obvious fix to traffic problems that hardly anybody considers.  There are two issues, traffic safety and traffic flow.  I believe the way the gov manages traffic is the worst of both worlds.  The simple solution is one-way streets for major roads.

Number 1, the most dangerous act in driving is a left-hand turn.  I would be shocked if anybody disagrees with that.  One-way streets eliminate left-hand turns in front of oncoming traffic.  That problem is solved, totally eliminated.  Number 2, the ONLY reason lights can't be timed, allowing traffic to flow constantly, is because of left-turn signals.  Eliminate the left-turn signals and all lights can be timed.  Number 3, a road that normally has two lanes each way with a center LEFT-TURN lane only has 2 lanes of traffic flowing in each direction.  This is ridiculous during rush hour, especially when the majority are going one direction.  A one-way street would be FIVE lanes in one direction, with the middle THREE lanes not subjected to people turning off the road but able to flow with the timed lights.  Side streets could be left two-way.  Rarely you would have to go around a block to get somewhere, but to me this seems like a small price to pay to not die from somebody turning in front of you.  If you have ever ridden a motorcycle you would know this is the biggest danger you face.

I think about this quite often as I drive delivering pizzas, waiting at a light, light goes green, go two blocks and the light is red again.  A colossal waste of gas and time, as well as having the most dangerous move in driving ever-present. 

When I visited Philadelphia 5 years ago to play in the World Open chess tournament I saw this system in action.  In downtown Philly virtually all roads are one-way.  The traffic flow is unbelievable.  A surprising bonus that I was unaware of was more ease of pedestrian traffic.  Traffic is only coming from one direction, so crossing the street by foot is much easier.  More often than not, people jay walk against the light because there really is less traffic, think of 5 or 6 lanes instead of 2.  It is accepted in Philly to jay walk by everybody including cops on foot, nobody cares, and it really is safe for the most part to jay walk this way, even on streets with 5 lanes.  Jay walking is a way of life in Philly.

The only argument I have heard against this is, "People could drive the wrong way on a one-way street."  Well ok, why don't they do it in Philly?  Also, if there were one-way streets with traffic flowing nicely, imagine how insane it would be to say, "Let's have 2 lanes each way and put a lane in the middle where traffic and flow BOTH ways, plus have left-hand turns, the most dangerous move in driving.  Then we could wait at lights and do some texting."

If you think these arguments are logical, you need to visit Philadelphia.  Somehow this government entity got it right.  But for the most part, cities across the nation prefer the most dangerous move in driving while the masses sit at red lights and waste billions of dollars in gas while idling cars, while who knows how many thousands die from left hand turns.  There really are few things more ridiculous than the driving system that most city governments adopt.  About the only thing I can think of that is more ridiculous is making it a felony to own a plant that grows from a seed.  Two-way streets are only logical for low traffic volume at slow speeds, period.  They make sense in small towns and residential areas but make no sense when there is traffic volume.

Freeways are the perfect example of the safety of one-way traffic.  You can go 70 mph and be safer than going half that speed in town.

I wish a few of y'all could have spent a day or two driving around with me in a tow truck.  The vast majority of accidents we had to clean up were in intersections, of course, the result of left-hand turns.  If we didn't have left-hand turns I would imagine our calls for accidents would have been more than cut in half, but of course I have no statistical proof at the moment.  I only remember intersection after intersection of accidents.  Just ask any tow truck driver or cop you meet.  There is no need for actual stats on it.

And not only that, think about coming out of a parking lot and crossing one flow of traffic that is going north, to squeeze into a middle lane and then merge with traffic south, yet another left-hand turn.  I have to do this all the time, and sometimes the southbound traffic has a car merging into the turn lane southbound while I am crossing the traffic to get into the middle lane.  It is really a complicated move that has a lot of things that can go wrong. 

So the system we have wastes 5.5 billion hours of our time and $121 billion in time and fuel, to say nothing of higher insurance costs from more accidents as well as who knows how many more deaths.  Something as colossally inefficient as this is only possible from government entities who have no incentive whatsoever to make them better.  In fact, the system in place benefits police, courts, insurance agencies, Exxon, and morticians.  At our cost.

You can't argue that traffic flows better now with the current system.  You can't argue that there is less time or gas wasted with the current system.  The only thing you can argue with the current inefficient system is safety when there are left-hand turns and there would be chaos with one-way streets.  Then why isn't there chaos in Philly? 

And if you agree with me I will be totally shocked because hardly anybody does.

Richard M. NIxon

The Most Tolerant Cashier

This is quite humorous.  Of course it could never happen here in the US because we're cool and special.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-01-12/hyperinflation-action-beer-bag-cash

In May 2011, Belarus surprised its citizens by devaluing its currency by 50% overnight in an attempt to kickstart its economy, leading to swift and brutal hyperinflation. And while written narratives of the most recent episode of monetary collapse are one thing, nothing is quite as amusing, and grounding for those attempting to "value" money (such as Nobel prize winning economists writing out of their steel exoskeletal ivory towers), as watching a bag of cash be used to pay for seven boxes of beer. And nothing is quite a cathartic as spending several hours trying to count said cash - cash backed by the "full faith and credit" of the Belarus central bank...

A Russian Opinion On Gun Ownership

Courtesy of Pravda, here is one Russian's opinion on private gun ownership.  Per capita, there are 10 times more guns in the US than Russia, yet Russia's murder rate is more than double that of the US.

http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/28-12-2012/123335-americans_guns-0/

Americans never give up your guns

28.12.2012

By Stanislav Mishin 

These days, there are few things to admire about the socialist, bankrupt and culturally degenerating USA, but at least so far, one thing remains: the right to bear arms and use deadly force to defend one's self and possessions.

This will probably come as a total shock to most of my Western readers, but at one point, Russia was one of the most heavily armed societies on earth. This was, of course, when we were free under the Tsar. Weapons, from swords and spears to pistols, rifles and shotguns were everywhere, common items. People carried them concealed, they carried them holstered. Fighting knives were a prominent part of many traditional attires and those little tubes criss crossing on the costumes of Cossacks and various Caucasian peoples? Well those are bullet holders for rifles.

Various armies, such as the Poles, during the Смута (Times of Troubles), or Napoleon, or the Germans even as the Tsarist state collapsed under the weight of WW1 and Wall Street monies, found that holding Russian lands was much much harder than taking them and taking was no easy walk in the park but a blood bath all its own. In holding, one faced an extremely well armed and aggressive population Hell bent on exterminating or driving out the aggressor.

This well armed population was what allowed the various White factions to rise up, no matter how disorganized politically and militarily they were in 1918 and wage a savage civil war against the Reds. It should be noted that many of these armies were armed peasants, villagers, farmers and merchants, protecting their own. If it had not been for Washington's clandestine support of and for the Reds, history would have gone quite differently.

Moscow fell, for example, not from a lack of weapons to defend it, but from the lying guile of the Reds. Ten thousand Reds took Moscow and were opposed only by some few hundreds of officer cadets and their instructors. Even then the battle was fierce and losses high. However, in the city alone, at that time, lived over 30,000 military officers (both active and retired), all with their own issued weapons and ammunition, plus tens of thousands of other citizens who were armed. The Soviets promised to leave them all alone if they did not intervene. They did not and for that were asked afterwards to come register themselves and their weapons: where they were promptly shot.

Of course being savages, murderers and liars does not mean being stupid and the Reds learned from their Civil War experience. One of the first things they did was to disarm the population. From that point, mass repression, mass arrests, mass deportations, mass murder, mass starvation were all a safe game for the powers that were. The worst they had to fear was a pitchfork in the guts or a knife in the back or the occasional hunting rifle. Not much for soldiers.

To this day, with the Soviet Union now dead 21 years, with a whole generation born and raised to adulthood without the SU, we are still denied our basic and traditional rights to self defense. Why? We are told that everyone would just start shooting each other and crime would be everywhere....but criminals are still armed and still murdering and too often, especially in the far regions, those criminals wear the uniforms of the police. The fact that everyone would start shooting is also laughable when statistics are examined.

While President Putin pushes through reforms, the local authorities, especially in our vast hinterland, do not feel they need to act like they work for the people. They do as they please, a tyrannical class who knows they have absolutely nothing to fear from a relatively unarmed population. This in turn breeds not respect but absolute contempt and often enough, criminal abuse.

For those of us fighting for our traditional rights, the US 2nd Amendment is a rare light in an ever darkening room. Governments will use the excuse of trying to protect the people from maniacs and crime, but are in reality, it is the bureaucrats protecting their power and position. In all cases where guns are banned, gun crime continues and often increases. As for maniacs, be it nuts with cars (NYC, Chapel Hill NC), swords (Japan), knives (China) or home made bombs (everywhere), insane people strike. They throw acid (Pakistan, UK), they throw fire bombs (France), they attack. What is worse, is, that the best way to stop a maniac is not psychology or jail or "talking to them", it is a bullet in the head, that is why they are a maniac, because they are incapable of living in reality or stopping themselves.

The excuse that people will start shooting each other is also plain and silly. So it is our politicians saying that our society is full of incapable adolescents who can never be trusted? Then, please explain how we can trust them or the police, who themselves grew up and came from the same culture?

No it is about power and a total power over the people. There is a lot of desire to bad mouth the Tsar, particularly by the Communists, who claim he was a tyrant, and yet under him we were armed and under the progressives disarmed. Do not be fooled by a belief that progressives, leftists hate guns. Oh, no, they do not. What they hate is guns in the hands of those who are not marching in lock step of their ideology. They hate guns in the hands of those who think for themselves and do not obey without question. They hate guns in those whom they have slated for a barrel to the back of the ear.

So, do not fall for the false promises and do not extinguish the light that is left to allow humanity a measure of self respect.

Stanislav Mishin

The article reprinted with the kind permission from the author and originally appears on his blog, Mat Rodina