Disconnect
Driving home from this last night (ok already we go out too much but what the hell....hard days are coming), we both commented on how unusually successful our drive to and from Toronto had been. When I moved to this area in the 1990s, one of the first visitors to my office told me that the best thing about living in Waterloo was that it was "only one hour from the airport." Over the years, the time seems to have crept up so that the last few trips have convinced us that it isn't often fun to visit Toronto unless you can stay overnight -- it's just too far. Now, to get to an event that starts at 8 pm, you pretty much have to take an afternoon off of work.
I digress.
Just after uttering the fateful words that we'd both put off uttering out of superstitious foolishness, we ground to a complete stop because road workers had closed off two lanes of the highway to begin the job of resurfacing a road that to me already looked like it was in good shape. The last time they peeled off the top of this highway was recent enough that I remember it. As I sat wedged in among a few hundred 18-wheelers, my mind wandered to Roger Doucet's excellent book, Urban Meltdown, read recently after a friend sent it to me to celebrate the fact that I'm in the youth of old age. One of his arguments is that we're draining the budget to sustain our roads and we're really doing that to sustain a business model in which highways serve as taxpayer subsidized warehouse space for just-in-time systems. I explained all of this to my wife (Ok, I'm not always the best date), but even while I was saying it, I was thinking of the utter insanity of making this kind of cash investment in a way of life that many signs suggest is about to end. When we could be putting money into finding ways to retrofit sprawling suburbs so that they can provide food for starving city dwellers, we're instead ensuring that there's a way to deliver more plastic salad tongs to Walmart for the next 5 years without too much breakage on the way.
Because to do otherwise would be too frightening? What has to happen before we drop the pretense that the way we live now is sustainable for much more than a decade?
I digress.
Just after uttering the fateful words that we'd both put off uttering out of superstitious foolishness, we ground to a complete stop because road workers had closed off two lanes of the highway to begin the job of resurfacing a road that to me already looked like it was in good shape. The last time they peeled off the top of this highway was recent enough that I remember it. As I sat wedged in among a few hundred 18-wheelers, my mind wandered to Roger Doucet's excellent book, Urban Meltdown, read recently after a friend sent it to me to celebrate the fact that I'm in the youth of old age. One of his arguments is that we're draining the budget to sustain our roads and we're really doing that to sustain a business model in which highways serve as taxpayer subsidized warehouse space for just-in-time systems. I explained all of this to my wife (Ok, I'm not always the best date), but even while I was saying it, I was thinking of the utter insanity of making this kind of cash investment in a way of life that many signs suggest is about to end. When we could be putting money into finding ways to retrofit sprawling suburbs so that they can provide food for starving city dwellers, we're instead ensuring that there's a way to deliver more plastic salad tongs to Walmart for the next 5 years without too much breakage on the way.
Because to do otherwise would be too frightening? What has to happen before we drop the pretense that the way we live now is sustainable for much more than a decade?
posted by Colin at 9:12 AM
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