Monday, October 04, 2010

Brilliant!

Hey, I have an idea! Let's close a significant stretch of interstate in a major city, from the perimeter highway to the heart of downtown, on a weekday from, say, the start of morning rush hour to about an hour after close-of-business... so that volunteers can plant pretty trees and bushes on the roadside!

I swear to Ishtar, you have got to have a government to do stuff that dumb; market forces alone can't provide stupid in sufficient quantities.
Posted by @
Labels: ,

27 comments:

Anonymous said...

Now's the time to plant trees.

So, government cannot close government roads when they feel like it?

Shootin' Buddy

7:43 AM, October 04, 2010
Tam said...

Sure.

A smart governm... chuckle, snort, BWAHAHAHA! ...sorry, a smart government (ha!) would do it at a time when it wouldn't cause a big mess.

7:51 AM, October 04, 2010
Ancient Woodsman said...

But that's not Arbor Day.

7:54 AM, October 04, 2010
Anonymous said...

No one at Lily "volunteered" for this".

It's sort of like "volunteering" for the draft.

That's why it's not on the weekdn, they're making the employees do it in stead of their normal work.

8:08 AM, October 04, 2010
Todd said...

My disbelief? That it's not in ATL.

8:08 AM, October 04, 2010
McVee said...

What, you wanted them to give up a Saturday? Hmm, I wonder if this is a paid day of service?

8:10 AM, October 04, 2010
Tam said...

Todd,

Having lived elsewhere now, I miss the roadwork in the ATL. At least there they had the common sense to do it nights and weekends.

Did you that in Knoxville, they'd leave lanes closed off during the day even if nobody was currently working on them? I had never seen the like...

8:15 AM, October 04, 2010
Wyoh said...

Um...new plantings in OCTOBER?? How long before the first frost up there?

8:44 AM, October 04, 2010
Julie said...

Did you that in Knoxville, they'd leave lanes closed off during the day even if nobody was currently working on them? I had never seen the like... we get this all the time ...

worse i saw was one lane of very busy main road - with heavy vehicle traffic closed because they were repairing the footpath (pavement) 2 metres away!!! The lane was closed during rush hour every day for a week!

8:45 AM, October 04, 2010
Home on the Range said...

I'm glad I'm going to be out of town for that.

A few weeks back I was driving home from St. Louis via 70 and then the 465 split and the traffic came to a complete standstill past Terre Haute. One lane was closed on I 70 near 465 in IND due to a broken truck and it backed up 40 miles. I sat for two hours before it moved.

This is the apocolypse of bad ideas.

8:48 AM, October 04, 2010
Fuzzy Curmudgeon said...

I saw this back in August.

It doesn't seem to have become any more smart since then...other than it appears only the western leg of I-70 will be closed instead of the whole thing all the way through town, which was the implication I appear to have gotten out of the original article in the fishwrap (which is of course no longer available).

8:52 AM, October 04, 2010
Fuzzy Curmudgeon said...

"Did you that in Knoxville, they'd leave lanes closed off during the day even if nobody was currently working on them? I had never seen the like..."

They ain't got nuthin' on Pennsylvania.

8:54 AM, October 04, 2010
robnrun said...

At least they are planting at the right time of the year, for trees and shrubs fall is the right time because they will be dormant. So maybe the hassle won't have absolutely no positive result.
Unless, of course, they are still planting invasive species that they then spend millions to eradicate, as has happened in some states.

9:34 AM, October 04, 2010
Jeff the Baptist said...

Could be worse. Philadelphia has been thinking about demolishing a large section of I95 because it is ugly and cuts the city off from the river. Somehow they think demolishing two miles of a major transit corridor will actually help revitalize the area.

9:45 AM, October 04, 2010
Bubblehead Les. said...

A few years back, the wife of the Ohio Governor (think it was Voinivich, but I could be wrong) thought it would be a good idea that trees should be planted in the dead space between the the highway and the on/off ramps. So millions were spent,and now as you come down the ramp in some places,gaining speed to merge, as you look towards the left for any traffic, all you see is a wall of green hiding that Old Dominion truck that's about to merge into your lane to get off. But it's so pretty!

However, there is one better. In the town where Breda works, every year they hang baskets of flowers for the summer from lampposts to make it look pretty. However, the bureaucrat in charge of it has a strict watering schedule for the flowers. So it is not unusual to see a tanker trunk blocking off a lane of traffic, moving at street sweeper speed, with a guy riding on top spraying the petunias in the midst of a downpour on the 3rd. day of a week of rain!

Wonder how many people will die in Indy on Thursday because the Ambulance can't take the Interstate to the nearest Hospital?

10:13 AM, October 04, 2010
Anonymous said...

Nathan

It took longer to build I-95 through Philly than it did the Egyptians to build the pyramids.

PennDoT "We make time stand still"

Gerry

10:44 AM, October 04, 2010
og said...

You're lucky. There are reasons for the traffic. In Mordor, there's road cones and traffic and lane redirection for no reason that is apparent to anyone.

11:32 AM, October 04, 2010
Joanna said...

I live less than a mile from work, as the crow flies, but the combination of traffic lights, jackwagons who won't pull forward for the right-turners behind them and overpass construction means the drive can take twenty minutes or more. Some days I could get there quicker walking.

11:43 AM, October 04, 2010
Joseph said...

I used to live in Mordor...I swear, standard procedure was to finish at one end of the highway and then start repair work again at the other end. It never stopped.

12:57 PM, October 04, 2010
Ian Argent said...

Yeah, that's pretty rich of Eli Lilly to "voluntell" their people for what might, in another time and place, be done by minimum-secuirty or community-service teams...

OTOH, confirms what I had been told about Indy being a comapny town, back when I was younger and working with a outfit that had the depot contract for Lilly's sale force's laptops. No way would any outfit looking for positive PR get to shut down a major commuting axis for any part of a weekday anyplace I have lived. (Excepting the FedGov in the DC area, I suppose)

1:31 PM, October 04, 2010
Fuzzy Curmudgeon said...

Gerry:

PennDoT "We make time stand still"

That's certainly been my experience, driving through the state on a regular basis since 1994.

At least I have an EZPass now. Makes toll paying much less painful.

1:37 PM, October 04, 2010
staghounds said...

It's a math problem. Which is greater?

10,000 commuters angry at "the government".

A couple of dozen Lilly people and some city employees working overtime, grateful to the specific officials who set this up?

Simple when you do it with numbers.

3:53 PM, October 04, 2010
Michael said...

Last week I spent an hour traveling a half mile on a major interstate during the day because they were power-washing the divider between north and southbound lanes.

4:58 PM, October 04, 2010
Ian Argent said...

@Staghounds - that's the flip sid eo fmy comment about company towns. Hands are washed, backs are scratched, everyone impostant goes home happy.

5:25 PM, October 04, 2010
rickn8or said...

"Did you that in Knoxville, they'd leave lanes closed off during the day even if nobody was currently working on them? I had never seen the like..."

Or when they dynamited the bridge as part of the latest I-40 project in K'town. Two o'frickin' clock in the morning as I recall...

'Tween that, college kids coming/going and ex-GF's snoring, no sleep for me that night.

10:42 PM, October 04, 2010
Montie said...

I would be so pissed if I had to work traffic control for this idiotic idea. What's wrong with the weekend or off hours?

We regularly piss off the public by blocking off a number of downtown streets with all manner of events and runs, but at least we usually do it on the weekends so that most of the traffic is actually headed to the event not trying to get back and forth from home and work.

12:14 AM, October 05, 2010
Home on the Range said...

Thursday - in today's news I-70 is closed for forestation of former barren median, resulting in thousands of inconvenienced people stuck in traffic for hours, accidents, missed flights and appointments.

Friday - in tonights news. Crowd of angry motorists release hundreds of hungry beavers onto I-70 median.

9:21 PM, October 06, 2010

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)