The situation is similar in the Chicago area. Some roads are almost perpetually bogged down. If there is an accident or stalled car, it gets worse. I see two things that affect flow.
1. As traffic builds and distance between cars decreases, the flow becomes susceptible to "shock waves". (Just search Youtube for "traffic shockwave" for an example. I think it happens when someone taps their brakes and the next car behind them has to brake a little harder ans so on down the line until traffic comes to a complete stop.
2. As a commuter and occasional weekend driver I recognized two traffic patterns. During normal commutes, the same drivers drive the same routes every day and most settle into a pattern of maintaining speed, remaining in lane, moving to merge and so on in harmony with other drivers. There is the occasional outlier, driving slower than everyone else or weaving in and out and trying to get ahead by weaving and passing in whatever lane momentarily has space. On weekends I see drivers who are unaccustomed to the driving situation and simply don't mesh well with other traffic. Even though there is generally less traffic, it does not flow as well. There is more lane changing and stuff like crossing three lanes to get to an exit because they forgot where they needed to exit.
Excess traffic is a problem and unfortunately we seem to be able to overfill the available capacity any time it is increased.
When I worked in downtown Chicago I was very happy to be able to take commuter rail to work rather than to have to drive, but those options seem to be more the exception than a regular option. That's a different discussion.
Yeah I've had my fair share of big city traffic, but this is very different. In many ways driving here is a lot easier than driving in a place like downtown Chicago or Manhattan because it's much much much lower-volume, so there's a lot less action you have to pay attention to, but all of the roads are tiny and twisty. It's like heart circulation vs pinkie tip circulation. And since it's so small, even being slowed down to a crawl from one end of the city to the other as part of a longer drive would affect your drive less than even moderately bad traffic in a metropolis.
1. As traffic builds and distance between cars decreases, the flow becomes susceptible to "shock waves". (Just search Youtube for "traffic shockwave" for an example. I think it happens when someone taps their brakes and the next car behind them has to brake a little harder ans so on down the line until traffic comes to a complete stop.
2. As a commuter and occasional weekend driver I recognized two traffic patterns. During normal commutes, the same drivers drive the same routes every day and most settle into a pattern of maintaining speed, remaining in lane, moving to merge and so on in harmony with other drivers. There is the occasional outlier, driving slower than everyone else or weaving in and out and trying to get ahead by weaving and passing in whatever lane momentarily has space. On weekends I see drivers who are unaccustomed to the driving situation and simply don't mesh well with other traffic. Even though there is generally less traffic, it does not flow as well. There is more lane changing and stuff like crossing three lanes to get to an exit because they forgot where they needed to exit.
Excess traffic is a problem and unfortunately we seem to be able to overfill the available capacity any time it is increased.
When I worked in downtown Chicago I was very happy to be able to take commuter rail to work rather than to have to drive, but those options seem to be more the exception than a regular option. That's a different discussion.