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>Most of them thought spending their life in a car was great -- certainly way better than having to take the bus or the train. It was a sign of success. You're

by tsotha 11y ago

>Most of them thought spending their life in a car was great -- certainly way better than having to take the bus or the train. It was a sign of success. You're overstating that quite a bit. Sure, driving for twenty minutes beats taking public transportation. But sitting in stop and go traffic for a couple hours every day is awful and people always realized it.

turar 11y ago
How much stop and go traffic was there in the 50s?
- tsotha 11y ago
  I don't know about the 50s, but by the sixties traffic was as bad in some places as it is today. Traffic in Southern California, where I grew up, is actually better today than it was in the 70s.
- dredmorbius 11y ago
  That's about when it started getting bad. The term "Sig Alert", for an unplanned lane closure, originated in LA in 1955. It takes its name from Loyd C. "Sig" Sigmon, who created a radio-based notification system for the California Highway Patrol: Sigmon developed a specialized radio receiver and reel-to-reel tape recorder. When the receiver picked up a particular tone, it would record the subsequent bulletin. The device cost about $600. The LAPD's chief, William H. Parker, was interested, though skeptical, warning the inventor, "We're going to name this damn thing Sigalert." More practically, he refused to use it unless the receivers were made available to all Los Angeles radio stations — it could not be a KMPC monopoly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sig_Alert#The_origin_of_the_Sigmon_traffic_alerts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sig_Alert#The_origin_of_the_Si...
  - pjlegato 11y ago
    Bad traffic was mostly limited to a few large cities such as LA then. In most of the US, it was not nearly as bad. It was also believed that traffic was a fairly minor infrastructure problem that could easily be resolved by widening the highways, adding a few more lanes here and there. (Turns out that when you add lanes, it just causes that many more people to drive on that road, but this was not yet widely apparent at the time.)

by tsotha 11y ago

turar 11y ago

How much stop and go traffic was there in the 50s?

tsotha 11y ago
I don't know about the 50s, but by the sixties traffic was as bad in some places as it is today. Traffic in Southern California, where I grew up, is actually better today than it was in the 70s.
dredmorbius 11y ago
That's about when it started getting bad. The term "Sig Alert", for an unplanned lane closure, originated in LA in 1955. It takes its name from Loyd C. "Sig" Sigmon, who created a radio-based notification system for the California Highway Patrol: Sigmon developed a specialized radio receiver and reel-to-reel tape recorder. When the receiver picked up a particular tone, it would record the subsequent bulletin. The device cost about $600. The LAPD's chief, William H. Parker, was interested, though skeptical, warning the inventor, "We're going to name this damn thing Sigalert." More practically, he refused to use it unless the receivers were made available to all Los Angeles radio stations — it could not be a KMPC monopoly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sig_Alert#The_origin_of_the_Sigmon_traffic_alerts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sig_Alert#The_origin_of_the_Si...
- pjlegato 11y ago
  Bad traffic was mostly limited to a few large cities such as LA then. In most of the US, it was not nearly as bad. It was also believed that traffic was a fairly minor infrastructure problem that could easily be resolved by widening the highways, adding a few more lanes here and there. (Turns out that when you add lanes, it just causes that many more people to drive on that road, but this was not yet widely apparent at the time.)