Potholes
Consider a typical city. Like Pretoria. What makes it beautiful and pleasant? Old buildings. Sunshine. Trees and gardens. But what is the most common feature? Roads. They’re everywhere. In fact, city planning always starts by drawing in where the roads will be built. Which existing roads must be enlarged to handle larger volumes of traffic. What new highway feeder routes will be needed. Where to build car parks.
Now no one can deny that a road is never a pretty thing. A wide strip of hot flat grey tar made mostly of an oil-based material which never bio degrades. It’s also a very dangerous thing. Nothing is safe on it, including the people in the high speed cars using it. Pedestrian deaths make up almost half of the 36 people killed daily as a result of our roads. That’s not including the maimed and the injured. Or the animals.
You watch any new road. For months there are dead insects, animals and birds on it. Eventually the road kill lessens because everything that used to live in the vicinity is now dead. A road is a disaster for its environment.
But exactly why do we build roads? Does it make any logical sense? No doubt you are thinking you need somewhere to drive your car. But do you really or are you simply emotionally attached to driving?
In the past, there were much less people and cars were slow and safe. Roads were often simply dirt tracks so speed was impossible anyway. So Henry Ford’s Model T wasn’t much of a threat and was welcomed.
Nowadays, as a transportation mode, cars have long since been rendered obsolete from just about any way you care to look at them. There are hundreds of far more effective methods of transportation which are much less costly, both on your and my pocket and the environment. Busses. Trains. Low-cost airlines. Bicycles. Scooters. Solar cars. Golf-carts (yes, in Uruguay golf carts are used on the roads. Imagine how short your lifespan would be on our roads).
Cars are expensive to own and operate. They destroy the environment. They render other, less damaging forms of transportation dangerous. They kill and maim. They waste hours of everybody’s time. And it’s getting worse – cars are becoming faster and hence the danger and destruction is increasing.
Now consider a city without roads. What if we dug our roads up and planted grass, trees, plants? Allowed indigenous insects and animals to return to the cities. Healthy happy people walking and cycling through parks to work. People only working half-day since the major expense in their lives has been removed. Peace, tranquility, low stress. A few roads for low-speed controlled busses and delivery vehicles only. Intercity travel by train and plane. Do your driving on a computer simulation.
It’s that simple. And just how to remove the roads? Well, it turns out you just need a pick. Then you make a hole about this big in the road. The hold grows naturally as traffic goes over it. Myself and a significant and growing number of like minded people have been going out with our picks every night for months and doing our bit. But there are so many roads, we can’t do this without support. You can start with the road outside your own home. I urge you to do the right thing and join us. We can turn this town into a Utopia, we can create a paradise, by simply destroying one road at a time.
Now no one can deny that a road is never a pretty thing. A wide strip of hot flat grey tar made mostly of an oil-based material which never bio degrades. It’s also a very dangerous thing. Nothing is safe on it, including the people in the high speed cars using it. Pedestrian deaths make up almost half of the 36 people killed daily as a result of our roads. That’s not including the maimed and the injured. Or the animals.
You watch any new road. For months there are dead insects, animals and birds on it. Eventually the road kill lessens because everything that used to live in the vicinity is now dead. A road is a disaster for its environment.
But exactly why do we build roads? Does it make any logical sense? No doubt you are thinking you need somewhere to drive your car. But do you really or are you simply emotionally attached to driving?
In the past, there were much less people and cars were slow and safe. Roads were often simply dirt tracks so speed was impossible anyway. So Henry Ford’s Model T wasn’t much of a threat and was welcomed.
Nowadays, as a transportation mode, cars have long since been rendered obsolete from just about any way you care to look at them. There are hundreds of far more effective methods of transportation which are much less costly, both on your and my pocket and the environment. Busses. Trains. Low-cost airlines. Bicycles. Scooters. Solar cars. Golf-carts (yes, in Uruguay golf carts are used on the roads. Imagine how short your lifespan would be on our roads).
Cars are expensive to own and operate. They destroy the environment. They render other, less damaging forms of transportation dangerous. They kill and maim. They waste hours of everybody’s time. And it’s getting worse – cars are becoming faster and hence the danger and destruction is increasing.
Now consider a city without roads. What if we dug our roads up and planted grass, trees, plants? Allowed indigenous insects and animals to return to the cities. Healthy happy people walking and cycling through parks to work. People only working half-day since the major expense in their lives has been removed. Peace, tranquility, low stress. A few roads for low-speed controlled busses and delivery vehicles only. Intercity travel by train and plane. Do your driving on a computer simulation.
It’s that simple. And just how to remove the roads? Well, it turns out you just need a pick. Then you make a hole about this big in the road. The hold grows naturally as traffic goes over it. Myself and a significant and growing number of like minded people have been going out with our picks every night for months and doing our bit. But there are so many roads, we can’t do this without support. You can start with the road outside your own home. I urge you to do the right thing and join us. We can turn this town into a Utopia, we can create a paradise, by simply destroying one road at a time.
Comments
Post a Comment