The Zax in the Prairie of Prax

Aka Gridlock – Stalemate – Oneeeek Traffic So, as happy as we are to be back in our homebase of Dhaka, we are also back to the daily battle against Dhaka traffic. Yesterday morning as we were coming back from bangla classes in Bonani (an very nearby neighborhood) we got a close up view of a true jam. There were so many cars and rickshaws in the intersection that there was literally no way for any cars to move. It looked like a jugsaw puzzle, as each car had inched forward as much as he could until the whole place was locked up. It was continuously building up in four directions too as the back up created long lines and everyone was yelling at everyone else to move and honking their stupid horns as if it was going to actually do anything. We are right at the front (because Taborok is pretty good at weaving his way to the front of the pack) and we were just watching the situation. It was classic gridlock. We’ve seen traffic jams (it is a daily thing here) but this was the most tried and true jam we’d seen.

There was no way that anyone could move unless people cooperated to fix the situation (of course if they’d been cooperating in the first place it wouldn’t have occurred at all). Finally, a guy that just happened to be on rickshaw next to us hopped down and went into the middle of the intersection and just took charge and started directing people to move forward, backwards, let this guy go, etc.. Another guy got out of a car and finally a police officer/military guy came over and started directing things too. Actually, the guy who got off the rickshaw seemed to have the best handle on the situation and it was interesting to watch everyone realize and accept that it was in their best interest to let this random guy have a little authority.

It also raised a point about the reason traffic is so annoying here. The cars are usually driven by paid drivers (who have dubious training and/or understanding of how to actually drive the cars they drive) who work for rich people who sit in the back of the car. They sit back there, get exasperated at the traffic, and so the drivers feel like they need to do whatever they can to look like they are doing something about the traffic situation. So they honk, or they inch forward, or they get pushy, because they don’t want to get yelled at by their boss for getting them to their destination so late. Then added into the mix is the generally abusive attitudes a lot of rich people take toward their employees, and you just have a crappy situation. If they were to let another car pass them in order to keep the traffic orderly, I’m sure they’d get yelled at by their boss. So everyone drives selfishly, and everyone suffers. Once again, the biggest problem here is always the personal cars coupled with social inequality (Things always go back to the social, which is something traffic engineers may fail to recognize in their plans – that is if there were plans here). The roads are past capacity and with the population of Dhaka as it is, it just isn’t an option for people to drive these big cars around to take one person to a single little errand. It is also not possible to continue refusing to compromise and refusing to change paths. Hasn't Dr. Seuss taught us anything?