Door to Door: The Magnificent, Maddening, Mysterious World of Transportation (36 page)

11:39 p.m., Lonoke, Arkansas: A married couple and their three-year-old daughter are killed when a heavy-duty SUV rear-ends their smaller sedan on Interstate 40, causing it to leave the road
and crash into a tree. The SUV driver is injured. Cause: driver error, possible distracted driving.

11:40 p.m., Santa Ana, California: A dropped mattress in the fast lane of the 55 Freeway triggers a four-car chain reaction of crashes that in turn leads to a hit-and-run, with two people injured and one killed. Cause: object on freeway.

11:55 p.m., Reddick, Florida: A twenty-year-old dies when he drives his sedan around a curve and through a stop sign at the intersection of two country roads and continues off the road, crashing through a sign and a fence. Cause: speeding, possible distracted or drowsy driving.

INTRODUCTION: THE THREE-MILLION-MILE COMMUTE

  
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Over the years, the stretch of I-405 closed for Carmageddon has been considered one of, and sometimes the worst, commute in America. The most current list from traffic data company Inrix, from March 2015, puts that section of I-405 at eighth worst in the country. Los Angeles has five of the top ten worst commutes in the country:

         
1.
   
Los Angeles: Riverside Freeway/CA-91 Eastbound

               
Corridor: CA-55/Costa Mesa Freeway to McKinley Street

               
Corridor Length: 19 miles

               
Free-Flow Travel Time: 20 minutes

               
Worst-Hour Travel Time (Friday, 4:00–5:00 p.m.): 81 minutes

         
2.
   
Chicago: I-90/I-94 Eastbound (Kennedy/Dan Ryan Expressways)

               
Corridor: I-294/Tri-State Tollway to Ruble Street/Exit 52B

               
Corridor Length: 15.9 miles

               
Free-Flow Travel Time: 17 minutes

               
Worst-Hour Travel Time (Friday, 5:00–6:00 p.m.): 72 minutes

         
3.
   
New York: I-95 Southbound (New England Thruway, Bruckner/Cross Bronx Expressways)

               
Corridor: Conner Street/Exit 13 to Hudson Terrace

               
Corridor Length: 11.3 miles

               
Free-Flow Travel Time: 13 minutes

               
Worst-Hour Travel Time (Friday, 4:00–5:00 p.m.): 63 minutes

         
4.
   
Los Angeles: I-5 Southbound (Santa Ana/Golden State Freeways)

               
Corridor: East Caesar Chavez Avenue to Valley View Avenue

               
Corridor Length: 17.5 miles

               
Free-Flow Travel Time: 18 minutes

               
Worst-Hour Travel Time (Friday, 5:00–6:00 p.m.): 63 minutes

         
5.
   
Washington, D.C.: (I-95 Southbound)

               
Corridor: I-395 to Russell Road/Exit 148

               
Corridor Length: 23.9 miles

               
Free-Flow Travel Time: 23 minutes

               
Worst-Hour Travel Time (Friday 4:00–5:00 p.m.): 86 minutes

         
6.
   
New York: (Long Island Expressway/I-495 Eastbound)

               
Corridor: Maurice Avenue/Exit 18 to Mineola Avenue/Willis Avenue/Exit 37

               
Corridor Length: 16 miles

               
Free-Flow Travel Time: 16 minutes

               
Worst-Hour Travel Time (Friday, 4:00–5:00 p.m.): 53 minutes

         
7.
   
Chicago: (Eisenhower Expressway/I-290 Eastbound)

               
Corridor: Maurice Avenue/Exit 18 to Mineola Avenue/Willis Avenue/Exit 37

               
Corridor Length: 16 miles

               
Free-Flow Travel Time: 16 minutes

               
Worst-Hour Travel Time (Friday, 4:00–5:00 p.m.): 53 minutes

         
8.
   
Los Angeles: (San Diego Freeway/I-405 Northbound)

               
Corridor: I-105/Imperial Highway to Getty Center Drive

               
Corridor Length: 13.1 miles

               
Free-Flow Travel Time: 13 minutes

               
Worst-Hour Travel Time (Friday, 4:00–5:00 p.m.): 53 minutes

         
9.
   
Los Angeles: (Pomona Freeway/CA-60 Eastbound)

               
Corridor: Whittier Boulevard to Brea Canyon Road

               
Corridor Length: 21.7 miles

               
Free-Flow Travel Time: 22 minutes

               
Worst-Hour Travel Time (Friday, 5:00–6:00 p.m.): 61 minutes

       
10.
   
Los Angeles: (Santa Monica Freeway/I-10 Eastbound)

               
Corridor: CA-1/Lincoln Boulevard/Exit 1B to Alameda Street

               
Corridor Length: 14.9 miles

               
Free-Flow Travel Time: 14 minutes

               
Worst-Hour Travel Time (Thursday, 6:00–7:00 p.m.): 49 minutes

  
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The expansive, spare-no-expense drawing boards of the early sixties had called for two other north–south freeways to be built to relieve any bottlenecks on the 405. But those projects had been scrapped long ago as impolitic, impractical, or unaffordable.

  
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Based on the 3.0156 trillion vehicle miles reported for 2014 by the Federal Highway Administration in
Traffic Trends
, December 2014.

  
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This is a daily average calculated from the finding that U.S. freight movement
is greater than $20 trillion a year. From
Mapping Freight: The Highly Concentrated Nature of Goods Trade in the United States
by Adie Tomer and Joseph Kane, Brookings Institution, November 2014.

  
5
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“Foreign Sources of Crude Oil Imports to California 2014,”
California Energy Almanac
.

  
6
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Urban Mobility Scorecard Annual Report
, 2015, published jointly by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute and Inrix, August 2015.

  
7
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Injury Facts 2015 Edition
, the National Safety Council's annual statistical report on unintentional injuries and their characteristics and costs.

  
8
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American Society of Civil Engineers' “Infrastructure Report Card, 2013.”

  
9
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The gasoline tax is 18.4 cents; the federal diesel fuel tax is 24.4 cents.

10
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American Road & Transportation Builders Association.

11
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Figures culled from “A Financial Model Comparing Car Ownership with Uber X (Los Angeles)” by Kyle Hill, Medium.com, August 31, 2014, and
Your Driving Costs: How Much Are You Really Paying to Drive?
, 2015 edition, American Automobile Association.

12
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“On the Performance of the U.S. Transportation System: Caution Ahead” by Clifford Winston,
Journal of Economic Literature
(online), Brookings Institution, September 26, 2013.

13
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“The Future Economic and Environmental Costs of Gridlock in 2030” by the Centre for Economics and Business Research, published by Inrix, July 2014.

14
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According to traffic flow analysis by Inrix, as reported in “$1.1 Billion and Five Years Later, The 405 Congestion Relief Project Is a Fail,”
Los Angeles Weekly
, March 4, 2015.

15
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University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute.

16
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“Uber Won't Kill Car Sales, but Ride-Sharing May Affect What We Buy” by Zach Doell, Kelley Blue Book, July 28, 2014.

CHAPTER 1: MORNING ALARM

  
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Just to be clear, this is not an homage to phones made by Apple or any other brand; the same tasks could be accomplished with a variety of other smartphones (or tablets or computers). This just happens to be the phone I'm using at the time of this writing and, more to the point, Apple Inc. began in 2012 to make public considerable details on its major suppliers as part of a corporate transparency and sustainability initiative. These disclosures make it possible to piece together a large part of the iPhone's journey from raw material to complete product. That was the same year Apple was singled
out for criticism over poor working conditions at its top Chinese supplier, Foxconn (which happens to be a top supplier for many of Apple's competitors, too). The supplier information is on the Apple website, https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/our-suppliers/site.

  
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“Carbon Footprint of a Single Newspaper Equals One Kilometer in a Car,”
Pulp & Paper Canada
, March 29, 2011.

  
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From
Consumer and Mobile Financial Services 2013
, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, March 2013, and
2013 Fiserv Consumer Trends Survey Shows Growth in Mobile, Tablet Banking
, Fiserve, Inc., June 2014.

  
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As of 2013, per Kidscount.org.

  
5
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6 Facts About Americans and Their Smartphones
, Pew Research Fact Tank, April 1, 2015.

  
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“Is 30 Percent of Traffic Actually Searching for Parking?” by Paul Barter, Reinventing Parking, October 7, 2013, http://www.reinventingparking.org/2013/10/is-30-of-traffic-actually-searching-for.html.

  
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The information on the assembly of the home button components is from Apple's Supplier Responsibility Report, https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/accountability/.

  
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Allegations of poor worker treatment at Foxconn gained high media exposure through a 2012 stage play entitled “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,” which was presented as nonfiction and reported as such by numerous media outlets, including
The New York Times
and
This American Life
. Both media organizations later branded the allegations as fabrications. (See Episode 454, “Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory,”
This American Life
(online), January 6, 2012; and “Mike Daisey Apologizes for Falsehoods in Monologue About Apple,”
The New York Times,
March 26, 2012.)

             
A subsequent audit requested by Apple and performed by the Fair Labor Association found overtime and wage violations were routine at the massive factory complex, which Apple and Foxconn vowed to remedy. (See “Independent Investigation of Apple Supplier, Foxconn: Report Highlights,” Fair Labor Association, March 2012, via www.fairlabor.org.)

  
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Other components include: a barometric sensor and accelerometer from Germany; the Corning “Gorilla Glass” from Kentucky; the five different power amplifiers from California, Massachusetts, Colorado, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania manufacturers; the motion processors from Silicon Valley; the Near Field Communications controller chip from the Netherlands; signal controllers and microphone parts from Ireland; the Sony cameras, LCD display, random access memory, antenna switch, and
touch-screen components from five separate suppliers in Japan; the antenna tuner from North Carolina; the flash storage chips from Korea; the audio chips and touch transmitter from Texas; the touch-screen films from 3M plants in the U.S.; the e-compass from Taiwan; the Simplo battery from Jiangsu, China; and a variety of other connectors, controllers, and modules sourced from cities across China and Taiwan.

10
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Rare earth minerals in the iPhone: rareelementresources.com.

11
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“Mining Your iPhone: Recycling iPhones Yields Gold, Silver, Platinum, and More” by John Koetsier,
Venturebeat
, April 3, 2013.

12
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“The Humble Hero,”
Economist
, May 18, 2013.

13
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The most authoritative account of the development and impact of the modern shipping container is
The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger
by Marc Levinson, Princeton University Press, 2006.

14
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International Shipping Facts and Figures
, Maritime Knowledge Center of the International Maritime Organization, March 6, 2012.

15
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“Shipping and Climate Change: Where Are We and Which Way Forward?”
Policy Brief,
International Transport Forum, October 2015 (revised).

16
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“iPhone 6 Plus Environmental Report,” Apple Inc., September 2014.

17
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Dairy industry white paper, Blu Skye Sustainability.