Tips for Making Alternate Routes in Traffic

Video Transcript

Hi, it's Dr. Roadmap with more tips on beating traffic. Of course, we already talked about when to take an alternate route, now let's talk about what streets make good alternates. For one thing, given the choice between two competing freeways and a surface street, most of us will take the freeway; two to one. And it's a wise choice because a lot of times another freeway can help you out. But if you are going for strictly surface streets, here's the best way to find the best ones in any city. First rule of thumb is to look at a map and find the shortest distance between where you are now and where you're going. In other words, a freeway may take a circuitous route to your destination, but a surface street might get you there straight ahead. Might as well go with the route that the road takes the shortest distance. The other thing is to avoid streets that have ramps to freeways. I can't stress it enough because freeways attract traffic. And the on-ramps will just pile up, so you want to stay away from any street that crosses a freeway. Look for streets that go across the freeway without any ramps. Along the same lines, you don't want to parallel a freeway, right next to it; especially if the people on the freeway can see that road. You can bet that if there's a problem on the freeway, everybody's going to go to that first road. You want to go a mile over...a mile away that parallels the freeway but not that close. The third rule is to avoid shopping districts. In other words, any commercial district, a lot of business traffic, central business districts, just stay away from them if you are trying to make time on surface streets. The other thing is, and there's some good ones, find a street that parallels a railroad track because railroad tracks purposely are laid out to avoid a lot of cross traffic. So as long as you are on a street that parallels a railroad track, you'll get the benefit of the doubt and a green light more often, and you'll pass through without any interruptions. By the same token, go for industrial areas. In other words, you might have to share the roads with some big-rigs here and there, but industrial areas are usually not that populated with cars. So find heavy industrial streets. You also want to find one-way streets; like if you are in a central business district, one way streets definitely move traffic faster than two-way. The other thing is for long distance surface street commuting, look for major streets that don't necessarily go straight through. Because if it's a long running street that goes from one end of the state to the other, it will have a lot of traffic. Look for one that takes a little more "moxy;" a little more brains to follow that zig-zags around and you'll have a quieter street. The last thing is: avoid tiny neighborhoods. It looks tempting, like, "oh yeah, I can cut through here." But no, the traffic engineers, I assure you are on top of things. They want to make it difficult for you. There will be speed bumps, stop signs, chokers as they call them; you are not going to make up any time there. Stick with the major streets. Don't mind a round-a-bout or two, or you know, traffic circle, and you can master surface street alternate routes.

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