COLUMBUS, Ohio — For most of his adult life, Derek Paulson assumed his inability to leave the house on time was a personal failing. His wife called it "infuriating." His boss called it "a pattern." Traffic scientists, it turns out, are calling it "revolutionary."
A team of transportation researchers at Ohio State University stumbled upon Paulson, 41, after noticing an inexplicable pocket of smooth traffic flow in the Columbus metro area every weekday morning. After six months of data collection, they traced the anomaly to a single source: one man, perpetually eight minutes behind schedule, merging onto I-270 just after the peak congestion window collapsed.
"He's not stuck in traffic," said Dr. Linda Marsh, the study's lead author. "He is the solution to traffic."
The findings, published Tuesday in the Journal of Urban Mobility, suggest that if just 4% of commuters adopted what researchers are calling the "Paulson Delay" — a consistent, unintentional offset from peak departure times — highway congestion in mid-sized American cities could drop by as much as 22%.
Paulson, who works in insurance and says he has never once made it to a meeting on time, called the news "a little vindicating, honestly."
"Karen has been on my case for eleven years," he said, referring to his wife. "I'm not saying I told her so. But I'm also not not saying that."
The Department of Transportation said it is monitoring the research but stopped short of endorsing a formal policy of national lateness. Several transportation advocacy groups, however, have already begun circulating a petition calling on commuters to intentionally delay their departures by eight minutes, a campaign they are calling #WaitForIt.
Critics argue the plan falls apart at scale. "If everyone decides to leave eight minutes late," said MIT traffic engineer Dr. Paul Cho, "then eight minutes late just becomes the new rush hour. You've solved nothing. You've just moved the problem."
Paulson, for his part, says he's not worried about the critics.
He plans to address them at a press conference next Thursday.
He expects to arrive around 9:08.