Expect Delays

Massive gridlocks are becoming increasingly common in many big cities around the world: Shanghai, Mumbai, Paris, and Moscow to name just a few. One of the worst jams happened last August, when drivers coming into Beijing found themselves in a 100-kilometer traffic jam that lasted for 10 days. So why, despite today’s high-tech navigation technology—GPS systems, smartphones, electronic toll passes and digital highway signs—is traffic only getting worse? Host Steven Cherry talks with one of the world’s great traffic engineers, Sam Schwartz—the man who coined the very word, “gridlock” when he was a traffic engineer at the New York City Department of Transportation during the ’70s and ’80s. Schwartz served as the city’s traffic commissioner from 1982 to 1986, owns his own engineering consulting company, and writes a traffic column for the New York Daily News, where he is known as “Gridlock Sam.”

Segment producer: Ariel Bleicher; audio engineer: Francesco Ferorelli