How You Can Waste Years in Traffic Looking For Parking
Wait….How Much Time?
Waiting in traffic sucks. In fact, it only gets worse once you reach your destination and then have to find a place to park your vehicle. It’s a vicious cycle of circling the block and looking for parking until you realize that’s no use, and with the clock ticking, you move on to the lots you passed by earlier only to find the ones closest to your destination are full and you have to circle back to a different lot. Did you know the average motorist will spend 8,325 hours looking for a parking space? In terms of days, that’s 347 days of your life getting stressed that you can’t get back. In terms of gas, that’s 47,000 gallons of wasted gas, or nearly “38 trips around the Earth,” all while essentially going nowhere.
How Slow Can You Go?
With 30% of most traffic in major metropolitan areas coming from people looking for parking spots, it’s no wonder that we all move at a snail’s pace. According to the New York Times, a study showed that weekday traffic in Midtown Manhattan moves at an average of 9.5 miles per hour. That’s “about the speed of a farmyard chicken at full gallop.”
When To Avoid Traffic
And if you have a case of the Mondays, having to go back to work after the weekend, think again. With respect to traffic in New York City, it’s a case of the Wednesdays, as Wednesdays are the days when traffic is at its worst.
To add insult to injury, late September, when the U.N. General Assembly is in session, coincides with the 25 slowest traffic days of the year when the average speed in Manhattan ranges from 8.6 to 6.9 MPH. Not surprisingly, other large clusters of traffic hover in New York City in November and December, when out-of-towners flood the streets to be part of the magical winter season (and bring their cars with them).
But if you want to know when the traffic is the lightest, then enjoy Manhattan on the weekends, or the Fourth of July when everyone has flocked to the Hamptons.
More Strife, Less Life
The influx of vehicles into any metropolitan area, let alone NYC, leads to an influx of traffic. According to the NYC Department of Transportation, most cars coming into the central business district of Manhattan come from 60th Street bridge, aka the Queensboro Bridge. This gateway adds to the nearly 778,000 cars, which can be found below 60th Street each day. With all these cars on the road, if you don’t have a game plan for where you’ll be parking once you reach your destination, then good luck to you! Have fun sitting in traffic for hours and being late to your meeting 🙂 Instead, avoid the strife and get back to your life. Get back the time you waste trying to find parking and book ahead instead. Alliterations aside, life is too short to waste, so don’t.
