Re:How America lost its love for the stick shift
by emodendroket on Tuesday September 11, 2018 @11:40PM
(#17965396)
> At an average of 40 miles per hour that's not particularly bad.
I gave you the time it would take if you drove at mid-day, not at rush hour (hence the "without traffic" qualifier). A lot of people commute to New York, as you might imagine (and you have to go through toll booths and there was non-stop construction), but my hours were variable at that particular job so I didn't always get the same experience. It wasn't part of my normal commute, but I assure you the George Washington Bridge isn't any better than the Golden Gate, and I have also driven over that in heavy traffic.
Anyway, I've done that and I've commuted on Massachusetts highways (allegedly among the worst in the country). I didn't enjoy it but my point is that driving an automatic car didn't make it any better.
At an average of 40 miles per hour that's not particularly bad. The people complaining about driving in stop-and-go traffic are almost certainly in much worse traffic than that.
The example I gave of getting from one end of San Francisco to another happens pretty much every holiday weekend. Average speed? About 3 mph. The worst part is the uphill approach to the GG Bridge.
Or you can look at the other SF bridge. In traffic (which has gotten so bad you'll see it like this on pretty much any weekend afternoon) it'll easily take an hour to get from the 280/101 interchange to the Bay Bridge approach (about 7 miles).
Traffic like that is why I rarely commute by car, but also why many people simply don't want to drive a car with a manual transmission.