Jams, impatience, anger

Year by year, it's getting harder to drive into town. UK readers would snort - "what an absurdity - driving into work in the capital city?" Surburban Warsaw's have gotten addicted to their short-distance one-per-car commuting. Three lanes of ul. Puławska blocked up solid. Park and ride? To get to the nearest Metro station from here, you've got to endure this for another four km, all the way to Ursynów. There's no alternative.

And it will get worse. As I wrote last week, this is going to get much, much worse as the building of the motorway junction over ul. Puławska will mean it slimming from three lanes to two. The road works will take a year to 18 months. Then there's the proposed bus lane...

And people stuck in their tin boxes get grumpier and grumpier. Impatient drivers cut up others, tooting the indecisive, the slow and the out-of-town. Chamstwo, as my wife rightly says. Tempers flare. The woman in the white Peugeot 407 beeping incessently at a bus because its driver had the temerity to pull out of the bus stop into the solid traffic stream (vehicle carrying 80+ people vs. vehicle carrying one selfish and impatient person). The man in the beige Volvo XC70 tooting at the driver of the Daewoo Tico in the queue at the Statoil petrol station on Puławska (chill out, man!). The driver of another Volvo estate hurtling down ul. Trombity overtaking everyone in sight (this is a 30 kmph/20 mph zone). This aggression, to quote George H. Bush, will not stand.

Once upon a time we moved onto a quiet street, almost a cul-de-sac, connected to the outside world at the other end by a muddy dirt track called ul. Kórnicka. Last August, this street was paved. Like water will find its way to the sea, so commuters will find a way around the blocked-up Puławska.

"They paved paradise/Put up a parking lot." Joni Mitchell's lyrics about 1970s California apply to contemporary Warsaw. Let's abandon our stupid damned cars, our status symbols, our sterile boxes shielding us from urban reality, let's take public transport, cycle, or use a scooter or motorbike.

Right: This view would have been unthinkable 14 months ago - a long queue of traffic on Kórnicka waiting to turn onto ul. Baletowa. To avoid this queue, we need to leave home at quarter past seven; by half-past the queue is long and ill-tempered, with impatient idiots overtaking each other just to get one car ahead at the junction.

Wherever you live on Warsaw's fringes, you will be finding this. Once quiet streets are filling up with frustrated rush hour traffic, seeking out the back-doubles as rat runs parallel to the choked-up solid main arteries.

What's the answer? Expensive flats in the city centre are OK for yuppies and dinkies, but once you have children, you need space and greenery. As soon as you move to the city's leafy fringes, you are condemned to spending two to three hours of every day getting yourself into and out of the city centre.

Above: ul. Taneczna, less than 9km/5.5 miles from the very centre of Warsaw. This residential road (which still has working farms on it!) runs parallel to ul. Puławska, which means that it becomes a conduit for the impatient, the slick and the smart.