I drive a volkswagon bug. These are some thoughts that come out when I'm squished.
Naples-Miami goes as follows (from memory, if you didn't know):
1. I leave my house and turn left, going south along US41.
3 lanes
2. Turn onto (usually) Golden Gate Parkway. Two overpasses.
4 lanes
3. Take the ramp onto I-75 S, a.k.a. Alligator Alley 'towards Miami.' Car Toll: $2.50. No overpasses till you get the toll booth on the Miami side, then overpasses become blurred...because the whole road picks up and floats a lot, pretty seamless slopes. Hm.
2 lanes (ramp) > 1 lane (merge) > 3 lanes > 2 lanes > 3 lanes > 4 lanes
4. Take ramp onto I-595 E towards 'Fort Lauderdale.' Overpass question still applies. It's as if, part of the time you aren't actually driving on land but on some huge concrete platform thing.
2 lanes (ramp) > 1 lane (merge) > 5 lanes + 'Fast Lane:' HOV/Carpool/Sunpass lane
5. Take ramp onto I-95 S 'towards Miami'
3 lanes (ramp) > 2 lanes (ramp) > 7 lanes (merger) > 6 lanes (5+fast lane setup)
6. Take (super!) ramp onto I-195 E 'towars Miami Beach' (the ramp is super because it feels like I'm driving a go-cart through the air or something on this one. It's really fun, if you accelerate the curve right.) This road floats over downtown Miami, then touches ground, then goes up and down in two huge overpass/bridges to Miami Beach then forks and there is another little bridge you go over where the speed limit goes down to 35mph (as opposed to 65 mph at the start and 55 mph over the other bridges) This is where the road slows down and becomes 41st Street. You go over another bridge over Indian Creek after a little ways.
1 lane (super ramp) > 2 lanes > 3 lanes > 2 lanes
7. Turn right onto Indian Creek Drive.
3 lanes > 1 lane (it's a one-way road and there is construction which narrows it down to 1 lane. Otherwise, from what I can see, it would be 2 lanes + 1 row of parrallel parking along the left side.)
Arrive at my apartment building, block 31.
I just read about the history and reasoning of the interstate highway system. Multi-lane flat roads enabled the military to travel and transport large things from base to base, taking over rest stops when necessary and closing down stretches for emergency aircraft landings. How it was sold to the public, popularized, and changed the American landscape by cutting across farms, grazing fields, through hills and deserts. How it popularized fences. How these roads weren't designed for people.
----------------------------------------
In the car gliding across the penninsula, I listened to some form of NPR that was interviewing an author of a book called Why We Make Mistakes. Josh, the author, talked about how people on cellphones basically get tunnel vision and that is why talking on a cell phone while driving is dangerous. He discussed an example where this obscure clown on a unicycle rode through a university campus and then went back and interviewed the people he rode by to see if they had noticed him or not. Sixty percent of people that were walking and talking noticed. Eight percent talking on cell phones noticed.
He also talked about the over-confidence of men and how that worked with the military. He again, discussed examples of how men and women played war games when they were given different scenarios.
----------------------------------------------------------
I guess why I brought this up was that I feel like everyone just gets trapped in this sort of tunnel vision. Not just on a cell phone. (I just liked that because it rang so true with me!) And maybe it's a little bit of that, paired with the innate over-confidence/aggression of our military men, that brought our huge interstate highway system into fruition.
What I mean by this is that the whole system seems short sited (perhaps merely the light at the end of the tunnel). Like car companies (and all those related, like tires) spearheaded and sold this road system on the idea of linking places and people riding on the romance of independence, speed, and the automobile. And the military wanted it too for protection, to help defend our nation. But why are we restructuring/hurting our landscape and way of life for this defence? As an outsider, it seems like there is this giant rat race in the military going nowhere. To just keep our imaginary lines the way they are?
One of the things that bothers me and I keep thinking about is that the companies / military isn't really the end all, because they are made up of people. You know? It's always people, breathing, living, thinking, that continue to make these decisions that aren't really healthy, benefitial, or good to us. When did the interest of a group/nation not have the same interest the individuals that make it up? (Aaahhh....these thoughts lead me to so many other tangents! Posts to come I suppose.)
I can't imagine what it would be like if I got places by trains and schedules and days were organized and worked around that. Or that the post system was still super good and simple and everywhere, so the thought of mailing something didn't seem so annoying and inneficient. ...These notions extend into food and practically everything. At what point does speed (and 'efficiency') become null and illogical?
----------------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment