Traffic!

Spending an hour and a half to get to work is something I am all too familiar with. That's precisely how long it takes me to get from my apartment in Russian Hill to work in Mountain View every morning. And that's 40 miles with the typical 101 rush hour traffic slowing you down.

Today in Istanbul, that's how long it took us to get across the city from one meeting to the next. We kept hearing about how bad traffic is here, and I am from LA, but this was really bad. In fact I am sitting in traffic again as I write this. We've been in the taxi an hour already.

Since 1980, Istanbul has grown from a population of 2M to one of 10M. It's no surprise the infrastructure has been unable to keep up. But the Bosphorous Straight bisects the city and only two bridges cross it, which creates horrible bottlenecks traveling between the Asian and the European sides. Lucky us we crossed the city twice today.

Recently I have visited a number of cities covering a significant area with infrastructure issues. At first I was shocked it could take us an hour or two to get from one end of Seoul to the next. Then Sao Paulo was the same story, now here.

I have a newfound fascination with urban surface areas....