A phenomenon that I’ve noticed in the two largish cities I’ve lived in was that traffic was always worse in the morning. Is there something obvious I’m not seeing here as to why this may be?
That’s when everyone (more or less) goes to work and school. It’s probably less worse in the evening because people don’t always tend to leave at the same time. School’s out by 2, banks close at 3, offices close at 5 (but your hard-working programmer is still in the office at 7).
Also - because everyone is converging on a few bottlenecks…
In the evening, people are (presumably) heading to any one of several million homes, preventing the same kind of bottlenecks.
Gp
Hmm, in Southern California traffic is usually worse in the PM than the AM.
A lot of that may have to do with the fact that a lot of people have to commute westward in the evening and have to stare into the sun for about 10-15 miles (Santa Monica and Ventura Freeways). I don’t normally go that way, but when I have it’s a major headache.
In the evening people do go different directions, but they also do things like run errands and go to Little League games and stuff. Also in large cities, you may run into traffic that is headed toward sporting events.
In the morning, all of us have one destination on our minds: work. And we all have to get there about the same time.
I actually have the oposite question. The replies posted here all make a lot of sense and are what I would expect. But in my case, the traffic is worse going home.
I suspect it may have to do with local road configurations.
I get traffic reports every 15 minutes (or something like that) here on 760AM in the metropolitan Detroit area.
Even at 11:30pm when there’s usually virtually no traffic, it’s saved me several times!
I think the PM traffic problem in Los Angeles is due to the fact that so many people live outside the greater metro area and because of the mountains and the ocean, there are really only so many freeways out:
East: 210, 10, 60, 91
North: 5, 15, 101
South: 5, 15
So there’s all this traffic concentrated on the routes leading to these few exits. The traffic may not all be exiting the area, but it’s heading for suburban communities along these exits.
I intentionally chose my city of residence to allow me to commute opposite the heavy flow of traffic, and (barring accidents) the traffic is indeed usually heavier in the mornings.