Traffic in Arequipa

Arequipa is a city of 1,000,000 people. It has 1 Sears-like department store and over 4000 taxis (officially, unofficially who knows). A taxi ride costs about $1.00. That's how Andy goes to and from work.

If you imagine traffic in New Paltz where two cars come to an intersection and one is turning left across the path of the other, the car that is not turning will keep its distance. In Arequipa, and in Peru in general, this is not the case. The driver waiting for someone to turn across his path will allow 1 to 2 inches of space for the other car to get by.

Near our home is a major intersection of two boulevards. There is traffic in all four directions but left turns allowed in only two of the directions (imagine traffic coming from the east and traffic coming from the south are both allowed to turn left. Now imagine that there is lots and lots of traffic. Got it? Now imagine that there are no traffic lights and no policemen directing traffic. Now imagine that the traffic is running smoothly and people are getting where they want to go; there is very little use of the car horn and no one is getting too excited. Sounds impossible doesn't it. Impossible, but true.

For those of you who are technically minded, the network utilization of the streets of the center of Arequipa is on the order of 95%. Most intersections do not have stop signs or traffic lights and so manage to function by having drivers put themselves into the middle of the intersection and wait for their turn to pass. The intersections are like 4-way stops with no stopping. I haven't seen an accident yet and when people do use their horn it is to advise people coming from a side street that they (the ones blowing their horns) don't plan to stop as they come through the intersection so watch out.

Of course, Arequipa has the advantage that a huge portion of the drivers are taxi drivers and know what they are doing. I suppose that a plodder like myself would cause an accident almost immediately.