Quit yer bitchin’ about your commute. Steve Coll writes about traffic in Lagos, Nigeria, where gridlock gets so bad vendors start selling food. Fascinating.
I was in Lagos in 1993, a city then of 12 million people with one traffic signal, and — honest this is the truth — that signal was not working.
I experienced this on a private bus in downtown Nairobi. The gridlock was so intense, passengers of many vehicles would simply get out and walk to their destination–arriving sooner, too. Drivers would stubbornly pull out into the intersection as the light changed, then they would sit there, blocking the cross-traffic. When it was the other direction’s turn, they’d do the same. It seemed outrageously stupid to me, because then no one got anywhere, and it would go on for hours. The fumes were unbearable, not to mention the equatorial heat at 5 PM amidst all those tall buildings.