A silver lining in transportation cloud
Once upon a time and twice a day on work days, at a crossroads vaguely familiar and just around the corner from Bob’s (hypothetical) Bait Shop, people travelling along a major highway linking the region’s 13 kingdoms had to stop and wait.
These weren’t the first times they’d had to stop and wait there. In fact, they had been stopping and waiting as they approached the crossroads for years and years and, with each year, the stopping and waiting became longer and longer. Patience and tempers, on the other hand, became shorter and shorter, with accidents and fights increasing.
The crossroads had become one of the region’s most dangerous interchanges for interpersonal exchanges.
Travellers said lots and lots of nasty, naughty words. They lodged complaints. They appealed to the rulers of the local kingdom.
“Do something,” they demanded. “Make this stopping and waiting at this place go away.”
The local rulers shrugged and said: “You’re on your way from elsewhere to somewhere else. Why would we make it easier for you to hurry away to spend your money in the next kingdom over? Stop and wait here a while, see a movie, grab a bite, go fishing.”
Some travellers took up the kingdom’s rulers up on the suggestion. Whenever they found the crossroads clogged, they detoured off the highway for dinner, did their shopping, bought worms and a fishing licence from Bob, and dropped a line for some meditative fishing time. Then, when the crossroads crowds cleared, they packed up their fishing gear and resumed their journeys.
Nearby businesses boomed. Bob of the hypothetical bait shop just around the corner started selling pizza alongside red wrigglers.
Then once upon an even more recent time, the region’s All-Supreme Ruler heard of the travellers’ tales of woe and nasty, naughty words, and opened up its money bags. It told its hosts of bureaucrats, planners and engineers to devise a plan to ease congestion at the crossroads and shift the traffic bottleneck to kingdoms farther up and down the highway.
Residents of the 13 kingdoms weighed in on the plans. Everybody had an opinion and shared it. Some had very strong opinions. It quickly became clear there was no way to please everyone.
An initial contract was let to build a pedestrian/cyclist bridge, do some geotechnical work and relocate a regional watermain, to be followed any day now by another contract to undertake the real work of reworking the crossroads.
According to crystal balls and mirrors on walls, it seemed the congestion at the crossroads would eventually, finally go away, at some once upon a time in the next 18 months.
But the 13 kingdoms’ experience with resolving problems similar to those at the crossroads is not new. Like the twice-daily weekday crossroads backup, it has been repeated again and again in some form with other problems across the region.
Problems have emerged. Residents have demanded action. Rulers of the kingdoms most directly affected have shrugged or dug in their heels. Then, eventually, one All-Supreme Ruler or another — sometimes both together — has stepped in, assigned roles and tasks, set deadlines and provided money. Thus, the 13 kingdoms have resolved where to landfill their garbage, how to expand their drinking water stores, and how and where to treat their sewage.
The kingdoms are now wrestling with how to manage and direct projected growth across the region. They’re collectively trying to determine where to encourage new residents to settle and new industry to grow, where to maintain greenspace and its essential ecosystem services, and how to sustain the virtues of the region that make it so attractive. Once again at an impasse, they have asked the All-Supreme Ruler to mediate a non-binding resolution.
As for Bob’s (hypothetical) business around the corner from the crossroads, it continues to thrive. Anticipating longer lines and more extensive waits during crossroads construction, Bob has applied for postsecondary accreditation for his newest business idea. His reasoning was that travellers could grab a bite, buy some maggots, and start and finish a graduate degree from Bob’s University, Bait Shop and Pizzeria — all while they wait out construction congestion at the crossroads.