There’s No Morning Silence For Car Poolers

Policy wonks may debate the reason for the death of the so-called car pool law portion of the Clean Air Act, but to me it is as clear as the radio reception in my car on those rare but happy occasions when I drive to work alone: mornings.

Mornings are a delicate time for the human animal. Yanked rudely from the arms of Morpheus onto the wheels of the daily treadmill, we spend our first hours of the day in a state of the utmost fragility, hoping to avoid the heart attacks and strokes that are statistically most likely to occur at 9 a.m.

Many of us find we can bear those early hours only by spending them in solitude, or as near to it as we can manage.

We crave the opportunity to read the paper uninterrupted or drink a cup of coffee in quiet contemplation, especially since for many of us it will be the only solitude we get all day.

What we don’t crave, and in fact cannot stand, is conversation.

Some of us take hours to work our way up the ability to talk. One friend who needs little time to get out of the house, nonetheless sets her alarm for 6:30 a.m. so she will be fit company by the time she starts work at 9.

The problem with car pooling is that it removes that buffer of silence. If you car pool, you either have to be monumentally rude, or you have to actually chat with your colleagues, impugn the weather and lampoon the latest office memos. And you have to do all this just as the morning heart attack alley looms.

The federal Clean Air Act had hoped to encourage car pooling by requiring large companies in metropolitan areas to come up with plans to reduce the number of workers driving to work alone.

But officials in a number of states refused to endorse the mandate, which was opposed by businesses. And both houses of Congress recently passed versions of the Clean Air Act that would make the car pool program voluntary.

Meanwhile, commuters have voted with their cars. In the Chicago area, the number of people car pooling to work dropped 21 percent between 1980 and 1990, shrinking from 430,000 to 420,000, a study found.

At the same time, the number of daily commuters who drive to work alone rose from 1.8 million to 2.3. million.

Presumably, many people avoided car pooling for all of the usually blamed suspects: unpredictable work schedules, dry cleaning to be picked up on the way home, the mythology of the lone cowboy/driver on the American frontier/highway.

But others share a dread of premature social contact.

“On the way to work, I like to be by myself,” said Paul Bernacki, a computer network engineer who drives alone. “Sometimes I’m grumpy. Sometimes it’s just nice to be in the car by yourself and listen to the radio by yourself.”

Sofia Piangalakis, a banker who drives to work alone, likes to reserve her morning commutes for quiet reflection.

“In my car I can think with no interruptions,” she said.

She considers certain car-pool conventions - namely, speech - inappropriate for early hours.

“I don’t want sometime talking in my ear, saying, ‘She did this, she did that,”’ she said firmly. “Leave that for lunchtime.”

Happily, some of us are able to be antisocial in the morning without being ecologically incorrect. I manage the feat fairly well on the commuter train, which generally offers an ambience of almost prayerful silence, broken only by the occasional soft snap of the conductor punching a 10-ride ticket.

It is an atmosphere soothing to the morning-jangled psyche and, hopefully, the cardiovascular system. I live for the day when the transit system outlaws talking on the train before 10 a.m.

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