In an odd way, I think Southern Californians are enjoying "Carmageddon," this weekend's shutdown of a portion of the 405 Freeway. Yes, it's a crisis…but it's a crisis from which no one is likely to die or have their lives irrevocably altered, and we'll be past it in a day or three. Would that every crisis was over in 72 hours and that the worst thing that might happen is people being late for work. Yes, some businesses may suffer a bit and some folks will miss flights or other appointments. But we've had enough advance warning that most people have been able to make plans accordingly.
Me, I'm going nowhere near anyplace likely to be impacted. The local TV news crews are promising hourly updates all weekend to tell us how things are going and how bad the traffic snarls may be. A lot of us can sit home, watch helicopter shots of Angelenos in bumper-to-bumper sardine mode, and feel superior to those who somehow thought they could get from Sepulveda and Ventura to Sepulveda and Wilshire without going completely around the world in the other direction.
A freeway closure is probably a greater disaster here in L.A. than it would be in some other cities. Out here, traffic reporters are always telling us that a certain road is closed or congested so we should "use alternate routes." The problem with that is that for many commutes, there are no alternate routes…or if there are, people don't know them. Maybe it's about time some of us learned if not a second way to get somewhere then at least how to program our Global Positioning Systems to show us.