It’s funny, I was warned that traffic in Midland would be terrible, yet I have not found it to be so. It’s not that there’s so many people, it’s that the majority of people are driving giant trucks which cause visibility problems for the rest of us. It’s true that I’ve seen many a car pulled over on the side of the road with a bent fender and an exasperated look on the driver’s face. Yet there are ways in which I think driving down here is better than driving in Billings.
The first thing I notice is that people actually let others merge into a lane. People are very patient and cooperative while driving instead of being stuck in their own little world, which is nice.
Also, the road set up has this really cool thing at busy intersections where the right hand lane slopes into a yield turn instead of a full stop on a red light, which makes traffic flow a lot smoother. I enjoy that, but not as much as my much missed round-a-bouts (which Billings has a love affair with, as do I).
One thing I have also noticed which is different is the annoying road construction. In Billings, if a road was under construction it was generally being worked on for a long time, and you just planned to avoid that stretch of Grand for a couple of months or every Summer to avoid it. An inconvenience but a manageable one. In Midland there is a lot of road construction, but it hops around every day. One day I might need to avoid the underpass at Midland, the next the one at Holiday, or maybe a stretch of road on Andrews. There is no planning for it and I’m always getting randomly stuck in it’s traps.
It interests me how even in the same country, basic norms and infrastructure can be so different.
I Say It Better In Writing 