Economics and Waiting at Train Crossings

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I noticed this for the first time back in early 1990, but I didn’t understand what I was seeing. When I started my new job in the summer of 1990, my commute crossed three train crossings, and I was only held up maybe one day in five, with the delay being oh a few minutes, not enough even to worry me. I left the house a few minutes early to make sure I had an extra five minutes and didn’t think about it. By early summer 1991, even that had mostly gone away, I hardly ever saw a train or even heard one, and the office was near a major train junction for a manufacturing park. Being in my twenties and oblivious, I didn’t think anything about this lack of trains. Over the next few years, I started seeing more trains, longer trains, more delays. It began to bother my commute to the point where I changed my route to avoid train crossings. I heard trains in the office once, twice, eventually four or five times per day. Again being young and stupid, I didn’t put the pieces together.

I saw the same pattern in 2001, I was at a different job by then, and my commute was mostly freeway. When I started the position in 2000, I would be stopped by trains two or three times per week to or from the highway at the single crossing at each end. But in 2001, that stopped. This time I put together that it was probably related to the recession but didn’t think much about it except, yeah, that makes…