Spaghetti and Watties

Urban development is chaotic everywhere, however some cities manage to do thing right, while others take desperate meassures just to get motorists faster to the next bottle neck congestion. That's the case in Guadalajara and Auckland. However, congestion is even worse here in Auckland because... well, just like Springfield, there's only one bridge out of town, and there's only one motorway. No matter where you are going, everyone, everyone has to cross the spaghetti. It's like a black hole, sucking all vehicles... and there's simply no way to avoid it.

Guadalajara used to have a similar problem because of the rail road... there were only few crossings. Now imagine that instead of having all the new crossings, there was just one big, spagghetti crossing, let's say at "la minerva". Forget "los cubos" "abastos" or any of the other crossing bridges... there's only ONE, big, big one. Of course it's not going to be enough! and besides... why take all the cars into one single point only to redistribute all of them again into all other directions?

Well, they say that some American urban planners were consulted many years ago, and they decided that it was easier and more economical to build only one spaggheti and bring everyone to the same spot, than building several bridges (like Guadalajara)... You see that even at this stage, there are not enough bridges, and each one costs a fortune. So, the democratic idea of having one single crossing bridge for all the city was in deed more economical and has less impact on the built surroundings. But it's just plain stupid!

Now the problem is how to get all those cars into the motorway. There used to be normal merging lanes, but there's not enough lenght to accelerate and merge into the motorway. People has to wait a long time to find a large void. So, they came with the idea of stopping all vehicles a few meters back, and they installed race-track light signals... where green is just for the first vehicle on each lane: on your marks, readyyyyy.... Go! Then, 20 seconds later, the next two cars may race their way into the motorway.

Sweet! Now the transit authority is encouraging motorists to race against other cars, like those "dragster" races... Vroooom, vroooom! Very James Dean!!! I am glad we have a V6 and a Turbo... We'll beat any crappy toyota corolla! I have to get me an Alpha Romeo!

I just wonder, where do polititians get their ideas from? Is there some kind of mad cow disease eating out the brains of people in government? I don't know, maybe it is like that plutonium poisoning.

ciao