Parting Shot
Under Construction
By Mark J. Lucas |
|
So S.R. 315 is all torn up.
Yay.
I've lived in Columbus since I was born, and there has never been a point where the road construction was finished. I feel like Winston Smith from 1984, always uncomfortably aware and on the verge of uncovering The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Construction, where I will read that the purpose of our whole city is to engage in endless road construction, run by an inner party with a heavy interest in orange road barrels.
Mark Lucas
That's the one business that hasn't been burned by the economic downturn. People are still building shit.
Whoever is making those things is rolling in dough. They're cruising the streets in Bentleys...at a medium pace, thanks to the traffic build-up caused by their successful business.
They talk about the millions of dollars that this project will cost the city. What they've neglected to mention is all the additional money it will cost in lost wages for commuters and the extra gas burned while sitting in traffic for that long. On the website, it mentions that the police will be extra strict, enforcing the new 45 mph speed limit on S.R. 315. I drove down it the other day, and I can promise you, there's no way I'm breaking that speed limit. I'm getting lapped by Segways. I passed by a parked police vehicle, and I swear I saw a stack of unused speeding tickets on the dash.
Oh, and the most tragic part of this is what they've done to Brutus Buckeye. He's the mascot they've decided to use to break the bad news to the public on T.V. We didn't have a city official for that commercial? We had to use a giant talking nut? Hell, I think we should use Brutus Buckeye to break all bad news to the city.
"Brutus Buckeye here. Looks like we're gonna have to lay off 120 people from the water treatment plant due to tax cuts. Go Bucks."
How about this: let's pick a road and fix it forever, rather than trying to gradually fix every single road in the city, and never really getting it done. You know, they almost never have to fix the Autobahn. Wanna know why? Because it's twice as thick as the freeways in America. How 'bout we learn from that? Oh, and while we're at it, why don't we put in a light rail train, like we should have done 20 years ago? Seems to work for every other major city in the Western World.
But I think we're skirting the main issue, here. We all know it. It's been a promise denied us for far too long, and it's about time we got around to seeing it through.
It's 2009, and I have yet to see a flying car. I mean, c'mon! We were promised this invention by every single sci-fi movie and television show ever made. The contract is clear: once we hit the new millennium, we're all supposed to have android waiters, lazer guns, kitchens that cook the food for you, utopian colonies on the moon, and most importantly, we were supposed to free the bonds of ground travel to drive on multi-level air freeways in cars that fly themselves. In exchange for these technological advancements, we were supposed to have begun WWIII sometime around the late sixties, after which, we would live in chaos through a Mad Max-style period of international lawlessness, until we all - as a planet - did away with war and prejudice, met aliens and continued on into a bold new future powered by human ingenuity rather than financial and material resources. Some of those hot women with green skin wouldn't be bad either, but, regardless, we are way behind.
So let's spend the money on research already and try to get to Mars. We need to quit wasting our time on this antiquated freeway system and start contacting some aliens, because we're way behind and it's starting to make us look foolish. What are they going to say when they land?
"My god! Driving on the ground? Yeah, we're gonna go ahead and check back in another thousand years. Why don't you try to get your shit together?"
Originally Published: July 1, 2009
