Last year I was on the highway between Saratoga, Wyoming and Steamboat Springs, Colorado. It was awesomely beautiful country. I could visualize herds of buffalo populating the rolling grass-covered hills leading up to the "purple mountains" majestically rising to the clouds along the distant horizons in every direction. No buffalo were seen but there were plenty of antelope. There wasn't a house in sight and "sight" covered at least 30 miles in every quadrant. I commented to my wife that I thought it would be a great experiment to dump the Messiah, along with Michelle and the two princesses down right there. They could have their full wallets with cash and credit cards as well as their cell phones. No cars, however. They would be picked up in two weeks.
That is what needs to be done with anyone in Washington who bleats ignorantly about walking or biking. There was no place to spend a dime there and no cell phone service to order from Domino's either. I figure they would either starve or find themselves taken in by a kindly rancher (if they could discover a ranch house in their roamings). They might have to work for their keep.
Just $1.2 BILLION of Your Money!
Admittedly that location was a bit extreme, but it isn't that different a situation from the small town in north Texas in which I live. We've got 3500 residents according to the sign at the city limit. We're just 60 short miles north of Dallas and less from some pretty well equipped bedroom burgs that are undergoing rapid development into urban clag.
Despite that, if I want a quart of milk, a new T-shirt, today's newspaper, or a book of stamps it won't be within walking distance and my bicycle has a good chance of being the instrument of my demise along the country roads and 4-lane divided speedways.
So what do you get for $1,200,000.000.00 these days when it comes to getting people to do what is physically impossible in huge chunks of the country?
This is a place where we assuredly could nip away at the budget deficit, don't ya think?
2 comments:
While cutting $1.2 billion of unnecessary fluff from the federal budget appeals to everyone with even half a brain - I'm afraid that for some of us, such an excision comes too late.
For most of my life, 'improving' traffic flow was the watchword of all urban planners and transportation functionaries. As a teen and young man in New York, all the natives knew that you could travel the 12-mile north-south length of Manhattan in twenty minutes (on city streets, rather than the clogged highways) simply by driving at exactly 37 MPH - the speed at which all of the 'rolling green' traffic lights were paced.
Years later, the USAF provided me the opportunity to spend almost ten years in Germany, where the gold standard of motor transportation ruled. It wasn't confined to the autobahn, either; country roads benefitted from something unknown in the US: the 'priority road' diamond. I knew no one there who ever received a speeding ticket, except from the radar-camera vans which were a fixture in those rare 70km/hr suburban and industrial areas. In town, or out in the countryside, the Polizei could care less about any speed safe for the road conditions.
Then, more than twenty years ago, I moved to North Carolina. ('Bellicose' Bob Etheridge's congressional district is just to my east and south . . .). A close friend talked me into moving here - despite a despised year we spent stationed at Seymour Johnson AFB: Amarillo with trees and green grass. He claimed that the Research Triangle Park area was so full of 'furriners' from all over the country, that it was nothing at all like SJAFB's Goldsboro - and that was at least partially true.
He failed to mention that RTP also contains the People's Republic of Chapel Hill - very influential upon the NC DOT, where traffic 'control' (rather than 'flow') and 'traffic calming' were the rules. Between 'roundabout' installation (mini traffic circles that preclude trucks by design, and by carefully-planted bushes and boulders intentionally obscuring oncoming traffic already in the circle) and dropping speed limits on country roads from 55 to 45 mph, these bozos figured existing roadways could handle twice as much traffic as before - at a slower, 'safer' rate.
The rural road upon which I live was destroyed as a highway, in stages, across the years. They added traffic lights at intersecting roadways, and timed them to impede traffic - rather than aid its flow. What I thought was the last straw - painting over the staggered solid/broken centerlines in those long straightaways with great passing opportunities for the occasional farm implement or heavily-laden truck, they created an 18-mile prison of double yellow centerlines.
But the inmates running the asylum didn't stop there. Spring always brought out the long-distance bicycle tourists on these twisting, turning, hilly, and thickly-forested rural roads.
As their numbers grew by the inclusion of dawdling yuppie families on bikes 'doing their part for the environment', local sentiment grew for prohibiting the use of bicycles, tricycles, roller skates, and skate boards on rural country roads with a speed limit greater than 35mph.
The DOT installed yellow-diamond signs (displaying a black bicycle outline and marked "Share the Road") every few miles, a month or so ago.
The Marxists LOVE 'democracy' - unless the majority opposes their ideas . . .
Ed, the answer you will get from eco-nuts and Im sure the Obama's is that if you CHOOSE to live too far from an urban location that is your fault and that you choosing to live in such a remote area is irresponsible. I've had that conversation too often :P
Apparently if you are not a city dweller you do not count as a responsible human being.
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