Much of Montgomery County is apparently stuck in gridlock today, as the county’s central traffic signal computer has failed. Traffic lights are cycling through red, yellow, and green, but there is no timing coordination; it’s every signal for itself.

In any complicated system this sort of thing inevitably happens once in a while. We all know the results of Metro’s automation failure last June, for example. One key difference, though, is network redundancy inherent to any multi-modal system. When the Red line went down, there were plenty of realistic alternatives. People switched to the 16th Street or Georgia Avenue buses, or drove, or cycled, or whatever. Losing the Red line for a while didn’t bring the region to a halt. On the other hand, if your system is built completely around one type of travel, when that system goes down you’re stuck up a creek without a paddle.

I don’t know how bad things are today in Montgomery County, but I’d venture they’re going better wherever there are options that allow people to bypass the gridlock via another mode.