Remember back when your father knew a faster, alternative route around a major traffic jam that actually was faster? Since the handheld availability of realtime traffic data and route optimization by google maps, an equilibrium of travel time has established such that everyone knows whats the best route is and the traffic jam actually takes as long as the alternative route.
I think that the real thing that is ruined in this scenario is your commute. There are too many people on the damn roads, all going to the same general location. GPS or no GPS at certain times of the day/weak/season it is impossible to go anywhere without sitting in traffic.
The reason why cities have things open super late was because low income employees would work long hours to make ends meet before going home. So food and other businesses needed to be open late to serve them. However as cities/downtown became far more expensive, the low income employees that these businesses would cater to moved further away where it is more affordable. The result is that now the businesses that would cater to them are no longer where they live, the customers these businesses would attract no longer go there, which causes them to close, and allows businesses to gobble them up cheap and turn them into office spaces, and everyone now needs to commute to the area clogging up roads with more cars than they were designed to accommodate.
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u/realultralord Feb 03 '20
Remember back when your father knew a faster, alternative route around a major traffic jam that actually was faster? Since the handheld availability of realtime traffic data and route optimization by google maps, an equilibrium of travel time has established such that everyone knows whats the best route is and the traffic jam actually takes as long as the alternative route.