"Rush" hour?

Why do they call it the rush hour? It's anything but a rush. I would call it the snail's pace hour. The Italians and the French are much more realistic - they use their own linguistic equivalent of the peak hour.

Something should really be done about it. People who have lived in cities bigger than Brussels all say that it's nothing compared to London, Paris or Rome, but I can safely say that the Brussels jam is awful enough. There's no respite. Even to get to the train station, it's a jam. The trains themselves are jam-packed with passengers standing up. Hmmm, I now realise a better term for the rush hour would be the jam hour...

So, what can be done about it? To begin with - more train trips, at least double the frequency. But I suppose the public transport infrastructure is already bursting at the seams. We probably need more innovative, revolutionary measures. How about spreading out the opening times of offices? Spreading out the time when employees can report for work and leave the office? A strong drive to promote teleworking, even if on a partial basis? Creating alternative weekends in the middle of the week? I can't see why not: various categories of employees work during weekends, and they don't seem particularly traumatised by the set-up.

It's just such a pity that so many of us have to start our working days at a high stress level from the very beginning!