I’m a self admitted traffic nerd. Whenever I go out of town I make sure to get up early to watch television to see how traffic reporters do their reports on TV in other cities. When driving around in other states, I scan my radio during rush hours to hear traffic reports from other markets. It drives my wife crazy.
While I’ve seen and heard many traffic reports from other areas of the country, I’ve never been a traffic reporter anywhere but here in Atlanta. I can offer little expertise in the way of comparing Atlanta’s traffic situation to other major cities.
Luckily my friend and fellow traffic reporter Crash Clark can offer some insight.
Crash started his radio career in 1989 and worked for some of the biggest stations and biggest shows in Atlanta until 2005 when he moved to Boston to become a traffic reporter and radio personality there.
Luckily for Atlanta commuters, Crash returned to the south in 2010 and once again offers his helpful traffic advice and unique brand of humor on V-103 and WAOK.
I asked Crash to compare the commutes in Atlanta to the commutes in Boston.
“Believe it or not, there’s not a whole lot of difference,” Clark said. “In some cases Boston traffic is worse. Boston is such a small compact city. So many people going to downtown to work. They don’t have as many ways around it. They don’t have as many alternates as we have.”
The one advantage Bostonians have over Atlantans though, is mass transit. Boston commuters rely heavily on their famous “T” subway system,
“As old as it is and as frightening as it is, it actually works well,” Crash said. “It was built to serve the entire city with many different lines. A lot of people choose that instead of driving.”
And believe it or not, geographically, Atlanta has an advantage to Boston when it comes to traffic. Because Boston is so far east in the eastern time zone and Atlanta so far west, the lack of daylight during evening rush hour is a factor.
“Sometimes in Boston you are in pitch black conditions by 5 PM. It’s depressing,” Crash said. “At least here in Atlanta you can get a good portion of the rush hour in during the daylight.”
Crash’s return to Atlanta also allows him to offer a unique perspective on whether traffic is worse now in 2012 than it was when he left in 2005.
“The delays are definitely stretching farther out, and I think the severity of the crashes is increasing,” Crash said.
Thankfully for Atlanta drivers and traffic reporters like Crash, technology is making commuting and traffic reporting easier.
“I used to just carry a clipboard and draw a picture with an x and a line and a circle to represent Atlanta,” Clark said. “That was pretty much it. No cameras and cell phones were few and far between. Traffic reports are much more accurate now. It was like caveman traffic back in the day.”
Well, the traffic reports might have gotten more accurate, but both Crash and I agree, the traffic delays certainly have not.
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