Cairo traffic is at times one of the most maddening aspects of this city, but to me it is also one of the most endearing. It is crazy and disorganized, but it flows, and when you look close enough, you pick up the rhythm. It's there in the foot traffic as well as the car traffic and where the two overlap and blend into each other seamlessly without either slowing down.
Despite a dearth of traffic lights, signs, markings, most of Cairo's traffic functions smoothly thanks mostly to the shared understanding of how things work. It's like a free market of transportation, the anarcho-capitalist approach to intra-urban movement. Let people regulate themselves and figure out what works best, and they do an ok job. Perhaps that explains why most major intersections will often have regularly dressed men and boys directing traffic during high-volume times of day. (Unless maybe they're being paid for it as a job and just don't have a dress-code?) Learning to walk here, like in any city, is a new experience for those who have never been to Cairo, but once you get it, you not only can navigate bustling and shifting crowds, but you feel more at ease in the city.
The fundamental rule is, as best I can understand it, just go. Go where you are going and do not stop. Go where you are going and get there by the most direct you can think of. Just go.
Correlated to that one rule in one way or another, there are plenty of things to understand when traversing the city. For cars not restricted to staying consistently in any one lane or under any apparent speed limit, communication is key. A larger set of driving communication tool is required. Egyptian drivers use hazard lights liberally as signs of slowing down abruptly (for speed bumps, chasm-like potholes, stopping and asking for directions etc.), and blinkers are used to signal big upcoming turns to cars behind (as it should be in the States). At night, there is a whole morse-code-like system to using your headlights to signal a range of emotions or intentions to other drivers. One or two flashes are a warning of an upcoming change or an announcement of your presence. Three or four flashes is often a sign of displeasure. The disconcerting down side of this one is that at night sometimes cabs will drive with there headlights turned off, only using the lights for communication purposes.
And then there is the horn. The horn is possibly the most important means of communication in a driver's arsenal. It is to be used at any and all hours of the day. It is that important. After all, when the rule of driving is to just go, the style of driving is decidedly more forward-looking. Drivers are focusing more on getting there from here. They can't be bothered with looking around all the time. So how are they made aware of another car coming alongside? The other car has already given them a short little honk to alert them of their presence, just as they are doing the same to the drivers around them. Because really, why limit our sensory input to the visual when driving? At the un-traffic lighted, blind cross-sections in the night time, this is also how cars alert any cars on the cross streets that they are coming.
Now, you may somehow know about young Egyptians' penchant for listening to their music really loudly (ok, well now you know), so how do they hear the horns all the time, you ask? Well many Egyptians adapt by getting newer, louder, more obnoxious horns. There is actually a street of Cairo where they only sell custom annoying-ass car horns. All manner of noises can be heard, but a particularly popular one is the one that sounds like an ambulance siren...
And to many of the driving habits of Cairenes, there is an analogue for foot traffic. For example, to the car's honk, there is the pedestrian's hiss. Like the honk, the hiss is just a means of getting attention. Sometimes they can mean "I'm coming up behind you with something heavy and need you to get out of the way," sometimes they can mean "hey cab driver, pull over, we'd like a ride," or sometimes just "hey foreigner, come talk to me and entertain me and let me practice my English." Though none are inherently meant to be impolite or insulting, as hissing is considered in America, the latter certainly toes the line, and because the various hisses mostly sound the same at first, it carries with it a hint of mockery that most foreigners find quite annoying.
What's more, pedestrians move in thye same way the drive: direct and unheeding of obstacles, be they moving or stationary. When crossing the street into the endless, oncoming traffic (you sure don't wait for a break) it is smooth and predictable as you and the cars simply judge each other's speed, adjusting so that both of you can avoid stopping at all costs. When walking on the sidewalks, people freely step on and off into the road to keep walking at their desired pace. In fact, since the sidewalks are often similar to lunar landscapes people opt to walk more in the streets than on the sidewalks.
In driving and walking both, the dodging and weaving through your fellow travelers often results in a number of daily bumps, jostles, scrapes, minor collisions, crashes, etc. but as the basic rule holds, more often than not the concerned parties are off and going again as soon as they can. They forget about the contusions and keep on going. The ust keep going.
And for the most part, it works. It is a system built on centuries of people piling up in this city and figuring out how to get around fastest for themselves, because they had no one to tell them. The comparative lawlessness of the traffic requires everyone to be paying attention. Sure, sometimes terrifyingly, I see Egyptian drivers texting as they barrel down poorly-lit, busy streets across cross-sections, but mostly I think Egyptians are actually better drivers than the majority of Americans.
Unfortunately, Cairo is a city choking on its population (see the link on the right entitled "Urban Harmony" for a really interesting take by an Egyptian student from Princeton University on Cairo's urban planning in light of a rather superficial government-sponsored urban planning competition). With nearly 20 million people, there are just too many people, and so accidents are inevitable. Even with the rather respectable metro system (although it is starting to smell pretty atrocious in this heat) that huge numbers of Cairenes use every day, the streets are just a mess. The government is trying to decentralize the city by building up the suburbs of "New Cairo" (where AUC's new campus was), but it's not nearly enough yet.
And so perhaps it is because of this obstacle that I am so enamored with Cairo's traffic situation. Because it works so much of the time. Sure there are endemic traffic jams, and certainly car accidents and deaths on a regular basis, but nowhere near what the average American would think upon first being plopped down here. To navigate the streets of Cairo safely, you only have to remember the basic rules. Don't let bumps bother you. Pay attention to all your senses when making your journeys. And most of all, just keep going.
Because, as I learned yet again staying out past the weakly enforced curfew the last few nights, Cairo never stops going.
.......
Despite a dearth of traffic lights, signs, markings, most of Cairo's traffic functions smoothly thanks mostly to the shared understanding of how things work. It's like a free market of transportation, the anarcho-capitalist approach to intra-urban movement. Let people regulate themselves and figure out what works best, and they do an ok job. Perhaps that explains why most major intersections will often have regularly dressed men and boys directing traffic during high-volume times of day. (Unless maybe they're being paid for it as a job and just don't have a dress-code?) Learning to walk here, like in any city, is a new experience for those who have never been to Cairo, but once you get it, you not only can navigate bustling and shifting crowds, but you feel more at ease in the city.
The fundamental rule is, as best I can understand it, just go. Go where you are going and do not stop. Go where you are going and get there by the most direct you can think of. Just go.
Correlated to that one rule in one way or another, there are plenty of things to understand when traversing the city. For cars not restricted to staying consistently in any one lane or under any apparent speed limit, communication is key. A larger set of driving communication tool is required. Egyptian drivers use hazard lights liberally as signs of slowing down abruptly (for speed bumps, chasm-like potholes, stopping and asking for directions etc.), and blinkers are used to signal big upcoming turns to cars behind (as it should be in the States). At night, there is a whole morse-code-like system to using your headlights to signal a range of emotions or intentions to other drivers. One or two flashes are a warning of an upcoming change or an announcement of your presence. Three or four flashes is often a sign of displeasure. The disconcerting down side of this one is that at night sometimes cabs will drive with there headlights turned off, only using the lights for communication purposes.
And then there is the horn. The horn is possibly the most important means of communication in a driver's arsenal. It is to be used at any and all hours of the day. It is that important. After all, when the rule of driving is to just go, the style of driving is decidedly more forward-looking. Drivers are focusing more on getting there from here. They can't be bothered with looking around all the time. So how are they made aware of another car coming alongside? The other car has already given them a short little honk to alert them of their presence, just as they are doing the same to the drivers around them. Because really, why limit our sensory input to the visual when driving? At the un-traffic lighted, blind cross-sections in the night time, this is also how cars alert any cars on the cross streets that they are coming.
Now, you may somehow know about young Egyptians' penchant for listening to their music really loudly (ok, well now you know), so how do they hear the horns all the time, you ask? Well many Egyptians adapt by getting newer, louder, more obnoxious horns. There is actually a street of Cairo where they only sell custom annoying-ass car horns. All manner of noises can be heard, but a particularly popular one is the one that sounds like an ambulance siren...
And to many of the driving habits of Cairenes, there is an analogue for foot traffic. For example, to the car's honk, there is the pedestrian's hiss. Like the honk, the hiss is just a means of getting attention. Sometimes they can mean "I'm coming up behind you with something heavy and need you to get out of the way," sometimes they can mean "hey cab driver, pull over, we'd like a ride," or sometimes just "hey foreigner, come talk to me and entertain me and let me practice my English." Though none are inherently meant to be impolite or insulting, as hissing is considered in America, the latter certainly toes the line, and because the various hisses mostly sound the same at first, it carries with it a hint of mockery that most foreigners find quite annoying.
What's more, pedestrians move in thye same way the drive: direct and unheeding of obstacles, be they moving or stationary. When crossing the street into the endless, oncoming traffic (you sure don't wait for a break) it is smooth and predictable as you and the cars simply judge each other's speed, adjusting so that both of you can avoid stopping at all costs. When walking on the sidewalks, people freely step on and off into the road to keep walking at their desired pace. In fact, since the sidewalks are often similar to lunar landscapes people opt to walk more in the streets than on the sidewalks.
In driving and walking both, the dodging and weaving through your fellow travelers often results in a number of daily bumps, jostles, scrapes, minor collisions, crashes, etc. but as the basic rule holds, more often than not the concerned parties are off and going again as soon as they can. They forget about the contusions and keep on going. The ust keep going.
And for the most part, it works. It is a system built on centuries of people piling up in this city and figuring out how to get around fastest for themselves, because they had no one to tell them. The comparative lawlessness of the traffic requires everyone to be paying attention. Sure, sometimes terrifyingly, I see Egyptian drivers texting as they barrel down poorly-lit, busy streets across cross-sections, but mostly I think Egyptians are actually better drivers than the majority of Americans.
Unfortunately, Cairo is a city choking on its population (see the link on the right entitled "Urban Harmony" for a really interesting take by an Egyptian student from Princeton University on Cairo's urban planning in light of a rather superficial government-sponsored urban planning competition). With nearly 20 million people, there are just too many people, and so accidents are inevitable. Even with the rather respectable metro system (although it is starting to smell pretty atrocious in this heat) that huge numbers of Cairenes use every day, the streets are just a mess. The government is trying to decentralize the city by building up the suburbs of "New Cairo" (where AUC's new campus was), but it's not nearly enough yet.
And so perhaps it is because of this obstacle that I am so enamored with Cairo's traffic situation. Because it works so much of the time. Sure there are endemic traffic jams, and certainly car accidents and deaths on a regular basis, but nowhere near what the average American would think upon first being plopped down here. To navigate the streets of Cairo safely, you only have to remember the basic rules. Don't let bumps bother you. Pay attention to all your senses when making your journeys. And most of all, just keep going.
Because, as I learned yet again staying out past the weakly enforced curfew the last few nights, Cairo never stops going.
.......
Speaking of Egyptians getting up and going, here are my best pictures from Friday's protest. A new Egyptian friend of mine that I was with in the morning knew of a ninth floor apartment on the square that pretty much let anyone come in and look out from the balcony. Besides the weirdness of just walking into this stranger's apartment already peopled with a few dozen or so people who clearly didn't know each other, and of the half-naked (maybe fully?), obese Egyptian owner sitting behind a desk as people tramped in and out, it was great to see the demonstrations from above.
The organizers had called for another million-man march, and while there were certainly tens of thousands, I got the feeling that many of the people there were just there to witness the event more than to convey a political message. There were typed up demands being handed out, but I don't think they're universally accepted ones. The movements here need more direction I feel. The night before they were fighting over whether to chant "down with the defense minister," or "down with the regime." But at the least, the movement is still mobilizing and will not tolerate being trampled on by the military government, and they are maintaining their peaceful methods, retaining what I believe is their best source of moral legitimacy in the process.
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