by El Zorro Viejo (aka; Jim)

Americans can be the stupidist humans on the face of the planet. What brings this up was a trip into Brooklyn to First-Born Daughter's latest showing of her art. To get to the opening day reception, I drove a carload of family into the city...leaving home in Central New Jersey at 5pm. I got to deal with an Interstate (I-287) that was a parking lot in both directions. Where once the roads were filled on one side in the morning and the other in the afternoon, now they are filled going both ways during the morning and evening commutes. This leads to two assumptions about our reality: First--jobs have moved out of the central cities and are now scattered, with no rhyme nor reason, across the countryside, and, Second--people do not make much of an effort to live near their jobs. In fact, a little research will show that most Americans are now expecting to have a series of jobs over their working lives, so their living arrangement decisions are usually based on something other than where they work.

[aside]I graduated from college 30 (my god!! I suddenly feel truly ancient!) years ago (last month was, in fact, my class's 30th reunion: I didn't go...) where, among other courses, I took a couple dealing with Urban and land-use planning. We knew what was needed 30 years ago--I can pull the textbooks out of the moldering boxes in the basement to prove it. What we didn't have, and still don't have, is the stomach to admit that we need to redefine what is meant by "private property".

This arrangement, jobs and housing scattered without conscious thought throughout the region, is insane. A glance at 90+% of the cars parked out on 287 that night revealed that most of 'em had but one occupant. So, here we are with petroleum based fuels costing more and more because they are getting dearer and dearer, and we have thousands, if not tens of thousands, of cars and SUVs (or "trucks" as my granddaughter calls 'em) burning 1000s of gallons of the stuff every day as they inch their ways to work and back home again. And that is just the cost in an irreplacable natural resource. Then there are the 10s of 1000s of hours wasted by the occupants of those cars. They spend about 1/12th of their days stuck in a car instead of being at home with their families, or out doing something more interesting than looking at the back of the same vehicle in front of them for 45 minutes both morning and night.

I have to brave traffic at the tail end of the "rush" every morning as I take my granddaughter to school. Even this little brush with the insanity of New Jersey traffic is beginning to get to me. I find my blood pressure rising as I get into the car in anticipation of having to deal with morons who, to be blunt, should never have been allowed behind the wheel of a motorized vehicle. It is about time that we started to restrict further commercial development outside of current commercial zones. Then we need to start squeezing those commercial zones which are not easily served by mass transit. That is what we need to do to even begin to get a handle on this huge quality of life issue. However, my bet is that it won't be done and that New Jersey, which is, BTW, the most densely populated state in the Union, will only get worse and worse. But by then I'll be long gone outta here, so I guess it'll be up to the next generation or so to deal with the consequences of what we and our parents have done.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. ©El Zorro Viejo 2002-2005