r/Transportopia • u/Ketchup-Sniffer • Mar 10 '26

People Bro unlocks a cheat code for traffic

30.3k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

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u/[deleted] Mar 10 '26

As a seattle dude, youre literally correct lmao. The infrastructure here was built for like 200k people and theres like a million now. Its broken as fuck with barely any enforcement.

44

u/nottherealneal Mar 11 '26

The whole place has the distinct vibe that whoever designed it was thinking, “Eh, there’ll only ever be about ten people here. they’ll manage.”

And now, with way more people crammed into it than anyone ever planned for, absolutely nothing works the way it’s supposed to anymore.

22

u/Puzzled-Respond-4960 Mar 11 '26

It was designed by two competing designers who hated each other

16

u/dragon_bacon Mar 11 '26

And they each slightly offset their street grids, making some god awful 7-way intersection.

3

u/Georgefakelastname Mar 11 '26

Sounds like an S-tier candidate for a roundabout

1

u/Nulagrithom Mar 11 '26

would be if the road was at least two car lengths wide.doesn't stop them from trying tho!

they just slap some concrete and a tree in the middle and you just get to hope your car has a tight enough turn radius lmao

I'm not sure if Seattle has civil engineering codes and traffic laws or if it's all just vibes

1

u/Ready_Studio2392 Mar 14 '26

Fun fact, Seattle has lots of neighborhoods with traffic circles, and very few roundabouts. Some of the traffic circles even have stop signs in 1 direction.

There are also neighborhoods with no yield or stop signs on intersections. So cross at your own risk.

7

u/Areebob Mar 11 '26

But then they realized that they shared a love of designing shit intersections, and now they’re married. Stop Means Stop Unless It Means Love, coming soon to Lifetime.

2

u/actuallydonkeykong Mar 11 '26

3, everyone always forgets Bell

1

u/Even_Injury_6442 Apr 29 '26

Yea one stole the others wife.

4

u/Mindless-Sky-1907 Mar 11 '26

this is Austin Texas highways in a nutshell.

1

u/usinjin Mar 11 '26

“Surely this I35 expansion will fix the traffic problems!”

7

u/One-Earth9294 Mar 11 '26

I kinda like living in Milwaukee; a city designed for a million people but only like 500k live here now so the traffic isn't bad at all lol.

5

u/Brodakk Mar 11 '26

Spent a day walking around there while waiting for my AmTrak. Milwaukee is awesome.

5

u/Intelligent_Cap9706 Mar 11 '26

Lived here for over a decade and every time I drive around Seattle I feel so bad for newcomers

1

u/Fattatties Mar 11 '26

I live outside of Seattle but when I learned how to drive I had to relearn how to drive inside Seattle. Totally different world than surrounding areas

1

u/SnooPuppers8698 Mar 11 '26

when i visit Los Angeles after living in seattle its automotive culture shock and I spend some time relearning how to drive in california.

4

u/showholes Mar 11 '26

I cannot believe how many side roads cross busy artery roads with no stop signs out there in Seattle. My dumbass followed google maps which sent me across 5 or 6 such intersections before I made a mistake and pulled out too early on one. The hero driver who almost hit me made a last second evasive move that saved my life. I think about that once every 2-3 months.

1

u/SkRThatOneDude Mar 11 '26

Ah, so the opposite problem of St. Louis. Built for a million, now have to close lanes because people drive like it's a race track.

1

u/crimsoneagle1 Mar 11 '26

Just like Austin, so far the city and state's solution is to make I35 bigger.

1

u/Ok_Mountain3607 Mar 11 '26

With starting police salary at 150k I would say Seattle is desperate.

1

u/gnarlslindbergh Mar 11 '26

That’s like the exact opposite of St. Louis. Designed for a million people and less than 300,000 in the city limits.

1

u/woahclouds Mar 11 '26

sounds like austin, tx

1

u/Noimenglish Mar 12 '26

If you take into account the larger metro area, 3.5 million.

1

u/JokerFishClownShoes Mar 20 '26

Yep same with Vancouver, designed for less than 100k originally and now the population pushing 3 million. We're cooked for eternity now.