Traffic Is Political
I think about traffic a lot.
Not abstractly — practically.
Trying to merge onto I-5. Crawling across 84. Watching the daily ballet of brake lights and impatience that defines moving around Portland.
Most conversations about traffic focus on one of two things:
There are too many people on roads not designed to carry this load.
Some drivers behave badly — aggressively, selfishly, unpredictably — trying to outmaneuver a situation none of us chose.
Both are true. But we tend to treat them as separate problems.
They aren’t.
Scarcity + Individual Optimization = Collapse
When roads are over capacity, the system becomes fragile. Small disruptions cascade. One abrupt lane change. One late brake. One person who decides their time matters more than everyone else’s.
We all know what happens next.
Traffic slows. Tempers flare. Risk increases. Everyone arrives later — including the person who thought they were being clever.
This isn’t a moral failing. It’s a systems problem.
Decades of research show that aggressive or “strategic” driving makes traffic worse overall. Individual attempts to win inside a constrained system degrade the system for everyone — including the individual.
And yet we keep doing it.
Why?
Because when people feel trapped, powerless, and late, they optimize for themselves. Not because they’re bad people — but because the system has stopped feeling collective.
The Lie of the Bubble
Cars are designed as bubbles.
Private, enclosed, climate-controlled bubbles that suggest autonomy and control. You choose the music. You set the temperature. You feel separate from the mass around you.
But that separation is an illusion.
Every car still occupies finite space. Every bubble competes with every other bubble. No amount of technological sophistication changes that basic math.
This is why self-driving cars are not the solution we pretend they are.
You can remove human error, yes.
You can optimize routing, yes.
But as long as we preserve the premise that every person deserves a private bubble to move through shared space, the competition remains. Scarcity remains. Congestion remains.
We are not stuck because drivers are insufficiently intelligent.
We are stuck because we refuse to question the underlying model.
Public Transportation Is Cooperative by Design
Anyone who has ridden a packed bus on a rainy day understands this intuitively.
Someone shifts.
Someone moves their bag.
Someone makes room.
Public transportation is not just a technical system — it’s a social one.
It requires cooperation. It makes interdependence visible. It reminds you that movement through space is a shared problem with shared solutions.
It’s not always pleasant. But it’s honest.
And crucially: it scales.
Traffic as a Metaphor for Politics
Our politics looks exactly like our highways.
Too many people navigating systems never designed for this volume, this diversity, or this level of complexity.
Some people respond by trying to outmaneuver:
hoarding resources
gaming rules
exploiting loopholes
insisting their issue is urgent enough to justify inconvenience to others
Others grow resentful. Or exhausted. Or disengaged.
Meanwhile, we argue about driver behavior instead of road design.
We moralize instead of redesign.
The Problem Isn’t Selfishness — It’s Mismatch
When systems fail to meet reality, people adapt in ways that look antisocial.
That doesn’t mean the people are the problem.
It means the infrastructure is lying.
Roads built for a smaller population.
Governance built for a different economy.
Institutions built for a slower world.
And yet we keep telling people to behave better inside systems that no longer work.
What Redesign Actually Means
Redesign doesn’t mean shaming drivers.
It means asking:
What scale are we operating at now?
What does cooperation look like at this scale?
What systems reward collective outcomes instead of individual optimization?
In transportation, the answer is obvious:
invest in public transit
design for density
prioritize shared movement over private convenience
In politics, it’s harder — but the principle is the same.
We need institutions that:
reduce time scarcity
make cooperation rational
reward dignity instead of domination
The Choice We Keep Avoiding
We can keep adding lanes.
We can keep buying better cars.
We can keep blaming bad drivers.
Or we can admit the truth:
You cannot solve collective problems with private bubbles.
Traffic teaches this every day.
We just haven’t been willing to listen.
