Testing Pittsburgh Traffic

Last Sunday's New York Times had an entertaining and irritating essay about how the world of drivers is divided into "lineuppers" (who wait an eternity, and then some, to take their turn) and "sidezoomers" (who head to the front of the line and seize an opening there). The not-so-subtle premise was a lineupping author in search of a justification for her feelings of frustration and moral superiority. By essay's end, she had found neither; "queuing theory" provides a surprising amount of support for sidezooming. No one, it seems, really has the moral high ground.

At one of my other blogs, I described myself as a sidezoomer, and I offered a rationalization -- though in economic terms, not moral ones. (Driving, it seems to me, is not an inherently moral activity.) But I also distinguished Pittsburgh, with the "Pittsburgh left" and its "After you, Alphonse -- no, you Gaston tendencies," as a culture that largely deviates from the angry lineupping/ostentatious sidezooming depicted in the Times essay -- which was based on anecdotes from my native SF Bay Area.

A commenter claiming knowledge of Pittsburgh declared that the absence of middle-finger-waving lineuppers in Pittsburgh doesn't betray our equanimity at a social problem that threatens to bring down civilization elsewhere. Instead, the commenter argued, Pittsburghers offer the Pittsburgh wave while seething inside. We're just as frustrated as those crazy New Yorkers; we just keep it to ourselves, smoothing it over with our legendary civility.

The debate clearly belongs here, rather than at the other blog. Pittsburgh has its share of abysmal drivers -- perhaps even more than its share, I suspect, but by national norms for urban traffic, congestion is rarely the issue. More often than not, in my experience, the issue is drivers and pedestrians. Neither group of people knows how to watch out for the other.

So this may be a sideshow rather than a main attraction. But do Pittsburghers seethe silently at sidezoomers?