This is hidden brain.
I'm Shankar Vedanta.
If you live or work in a city, sitting in traffic is probably a big part of your life.
About 15 to Lincoln, about 20 to 30 out in the inbound side, we had about a 20 minutes delay.
Here in Washington, DC, we take perverse pride in having some of the worst traffic in the United States.
But on a global scale, DC has nothing on London or Istanbul, Rio or Mexico City.
On today's episode, we're going to explore all kinds of interventions that can make traffic better.
We're also going to look at the interventions that are supposed to make traffic better.
But don't I feel like we should put together the International Journal of unintended consequences and send them to lawmakers all over the planet.
Before we get there, we want to take you on a quick trip around some of the world's most congested cities.
Producer Maggie Penman reached out to NPR correspondents stationed in Asia, Africa and Europe.
She's also going to tell us about a little traffic culture clash of her own.
So a few years ago, I'm out in LA for a couple of days for work.
I'm driving a rented car and I come up to a busy intersection and I'm trying to turn left.
I have my blinker on.
I'm in the left hand turn lane and the light is green.
But there are still tons of cars coming through the intersection.
So I patiently sit there waiting my turn, and the light turns yellow and there's still cars coming through the intersection.
And then the light turns red.
I think, okay, I'll just wait until the light turns green again.