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On a couple of occasions last year I attended meetings
of an informal body called the Colorado Cooperation
Conference.
The idea is to improve rural-urban
relationships, and it's pretty interesting.
However, I never learned the ground rules for press
coverage. As someone experienced in the art of finding
sensational statements and publishing them out of context
(as Bob Ewegen often observes, journalism is the art of
relentless oversimplification
), I can understand why
people are reluctant to speak candidly when they might be
quoted in the public prints.
So I'll avoid any names. Big City Mayor observed that in
meeting with his colleagues, we've seen a pattern. Gang
activity, and crime in general, tends to follow the
interstates.
Half an hour later, Western Slope Politico announced that four-lane highways installed to every hamlet would solve most economic and social problems in Colorado.
When it was my turn to talk, I wondered if I was the only one there who saw the connection: better roads bring crime, not prosperity.
That's heresy in Colorado. As soon as the General Assembly gets into gear this year, they'll find ways to put more money into the highway fund, and the governor will go along with it. He'll probably take credit for it.
But I'm not the only heretic. Writing recently in the bi-monthly San Juan Almanac ($15 a year from P.O. Box 116, Durango, Colo. 81302), Ken Wright argues that the San Juan region would be better off if it were more isolated, especially from highway traffic.
At home, I read that Salida is in a state of mortal
terror and that we're all now shaking in our boots and
locking our doors on account of a murder of a
convenience-store owner Tuesday night in Poncha Springs,
the Crossroads of the Rockies.
Give people good roads, and they'll use them to find places to commit crimes, and then to flee. After shooting Richard Ellis, did this murderer head east or west on U.S. 50, or north or south on U.S. 285? Was this killer properly grateful to the Good Roads Lobby for the ease of his getaway?
What else happens when we get better roads?
For one thing, more long-haul commuters. I just read
about someone commuting from Hartsel to Denver -- about
three hours each way. Does the phrase get a life
come to mind? More than half of Park County commutes to
another county, as does much of Lake County.
You get a population of people whose loyalties have to be divided, since they work in one place and live in another. And how much energy can they put into the place they live when they're gone so much?
While the presence of good commuter roads improves the chances of selling lots in some subdivisions, it doesn't improve much else. We get developments full of tired people and their latch-key children.
A drive along the Interstate-70 corridor between Denver
and Vail reveals another benefit
of an improved
highway: commercial strip development, along with air
pollution and congestion.
Every time a new metro highway is opened, we hear pronouncements that traffic will henceforth move smoothly. That actually happens for about a fortnight. Then the traffic flow magically adjusts so that the new highway is just as crowded as the others. Millions of dollars get spent, to no discernible benefit -- except, perhaps, to EPA bureaucrats who have more bad-air readings to help justify their existence.
As for the general arguments about prosperity, where are the highest real-estate values and per-capita incomes in Colorado? Aspen, at the end of a wretched two-lane road backed up against a wilderness. Crested Butte, at the end of a miserable two-lane road backed up against a wilderness. Telluride, at the end of a shoddy ... do you see a pattern here that doesn't have much to do with four-lane limited-access highways?
Last summer, some history buffs based in Monte Vista began to organize the Old Spanish Trail Association. The trail, designed to connect Santa Fe to Los Angeles, represented a deliberate effort by the colonial office in Madrid to establish a route that would hold Spain's faltering empire together. The famous Dominguez-Escalante expedition of 1776 was part of this effort.
Reading about the Old Spanish Trail inspired some contemplation. Rome held its empire together with roads. So did the Incas. They needed the roads, not only for commerce, but to dispatch troops for quelling provincial disorders.
Then recall that our interstate highways were originally
promoted as a defense
measure for military
transportation.
So when we hear talk about the need for better
roads,
maybe we're missing the real question when we
address things like crime, congestion or air pollution.
Perhaps we should realize that roads are actually
instruments of empire, and ask ourselves what imperial
power wants this road, and why?
Not that our answers
would matter, but we'd have a better idea of what's going
on and why.
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