Observation About Driving

Although I love to drive there is an aspect of diving that I hate, traffic is my enemy it is stressful and time consuming. My plan for my observation was to observe my day that I knew consisted of driving and unfortunately sitting in traffic. My day looks like, I go to work in the morning and drive to my parents ' house.

My job consists of me driving and making deliveries, I get on my phone and open the post mate 's app I go online and wait for a job. Once I got notified that I had a delivery to Chicago bagel authority I opened Apple maps and started to drive. As I drove to the restaurant I approached my first obstacle, some information about me is that I have a great amount of anger towards certain stop lights and I knew that I was coming

As I got on the road I knew I was going to hit afternoon rush hour the worst possible time to drive. My drive home is from the Belmont on ramp on to I-90 south to I-94 south and to 394. The majority of the traffic is through the jane Bryant interchange to 95th street, the entire way is bumper to bumper traffic. While I am on the on ramp onto I-90 I see a stop light on the ramp, I thought it strange that there was a stop light here. It controls how many cars can merge onto the highway, it works as a stop sign once you make a complete stop before the line it turns green. I have seen ramp lights in other cities but as I go through the jane Bryant interchange I notice something that I have only seen in Chicago, the on ramp is on the left side and the off ramp is on the left. Traditionally the on and off ramps share the right side. As I continue on I-90, I start to think about when I was in California and the differences between the highways there and here. One of the main difference is that in California the highways use HOV lanes. HOV lanes are lanes that only allow people that are carpooling to travel on. Also, the numerous amount of pot holes on the highway compared to California. I got home after two hours of consistent

One of the more broader question I have is, how does traffic get started? maybe there is a certain number of cars that can be on a road for it to have traffic. Also, many questions about stop lights, one of them is, why are there only the three-street intersection in Chicago? I have never seen these types of intersections in any other city or suburb. The three-street intersection might allow more cars to move through intersections, maybe that 's why I only see them in Chicago. Also, what who/what determines the amount of time a light is green? Some guesses I have are that they use the sensors in the road to see which street gets more traffic and give the street with more cars more time with the light green. A solution I have for Ubers/Lyft and having them not stop in the middle of the road is installing pick up locations, so passenger can wait there for their Uber/Lyft and they do not have to disrupt traffic. The thing that interested me the most was my observation that there was not HOV lanes in Chicago. I was curious on why such a big city like Chicago do not have them. Do HOV lanes help with traffic? Why do cities implement HOV lanes? What are the benefits of HOV lanes?

From my interest in HOV my research question is, should Chicago implement HOV lanes on Interstates and highways? This question is important because it can say if HOV lanes would benefit Chicago. These car pool lanes can benefit in the