Maybe the world should end more often!
Jul 18, 2011, 9:07 AM
Listen to Maybe the world should end more often!
We are all brought up to dread the end of the world. In Biblical times, that meant monsters lunging at us from the sky; in 2011, it means closing a freeway.
Avoid the area!
Ten miles of I-405 closed in LA. And what happened? Nothing.
“It’s amazingly not traffic-y!” said one surprised woman. “It’s just, absolutely, a breeze getting around.”
“It’s kind of like a ghost town,” as one man described it.
“It’s the lightest traffic I’ve ever seen in LA,” said another man.
People did what they always do when they have advance warning that a road is closing — they made other plans. They shopped online, visited friends on Facebook, went canoeing on their Wii’s, and it worked so well, there have been calls to close the freeways on a regular basis!
Ha ha ha! Right!
Every so often we get a glimpse of a fundamental but dangerous truth, in this case, the idea that we can indeed get by with a lot less driving. It’s tempting to think that the next time some oil state threatens us, we could just threaten them right back with a freeway shut down.
But it can’t happen, and it’s dangerous even to THINK it. Why? Because a huge industry and millions of jobs depend on us believing that freeways must get ever-wider!
The reason for Carmageddon and the reason people tolerated it — was because it’s part of a project to WIDEN that road. The truth, of course, is that the traffic jams will reappear — except they’ll be wider.
The good news there — that means another widening project and another traffic free weekend in about 20 years.
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