Have you ever thought about roads? Have you really given it a good, long think? Why do they smell like that? What is that smell, anyway? Knowing you, you probably haven’t. Yet, you’ve certainly sat in heavy congestion, ensconced by cars on all sides, cursing the capriciousness of Trafficaestus, the shameless God of traffic. Like all deities, Mr. T has a divine plan based on whimsy and weirdness. It involves jackknifed tractor trailers, obscene hand gestures and cartons of spilled produce lining the highway. Never once a tipped over Brink’s truck – but that’s another matter entirely. Apparently, the Bitcoin boys have gotten to him, too. It's far from fair. When the Olympian folks drive, they're still riding around in retro chariots, expecting us to clear the way for their ancient motorlesscade. What effrontery. Would it kill them to buy a Tesla?
You honk and howl. Blast the windshield wiper fluid into the abyss. Flick your lights with more gusto than the world’s foremost fan of house music. Because, really, what else can you do? You’re not going anywhere until things change. And much like society itself, traffic change is slow and painful. You, along with the surrounding shrieking saps, wait it out.
Every few years, some hotshot infrastructure consultant named Dieter or Gunter or Sammy lands in New York City promising big things and bigger results. They claim to have all the answers to our city’s dire traffic woes. What we need are more bridges, more zip lines, more tunnels. What they don’t understand – what they never understand – is that the answers to our traffic woes are all around us. There’s plenty of room to drive, as long as you have a healthy imagination. Sidewalks, yards, parks, cemeteries, ballfields and basketball courts.
You don't have to learn to scale tall buildings or run across car roofs - though it never hurts to keep one's options open. There are other vehicles, but this is a matter of principle. You should be able to get anywhere on earth in a car, without downsizing to a scooter, or worse yet, a pair of rollerblades.
We’re defining roads all wrong. A road is anywhere you can drive. Which is basically anywhere outside of major bodies of water, and even a few of those would work (The LA river anyone?). Let’s not forget that roads are constructs. Therefore, we get to decide what constitutes one. It’s 2020. Is it still necessary to pay tribute to the design popularized by Ancient Roman meddlers? Ideally, roads should transport us places. Instead, we’re letting them limit our travel based on where some fellas in hard hats decided to lay down blacktop.
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