Adopt A Highway

While biking around Nimbus Lake last week in Folsom, I noticed that the American River Parkway has put up little signs where you can adopt a section of the trail. There's a little space for individual financial sponsors, and a space for corporate logos.

This is horseshit. We've clearly failed to spend our tax dollars, wisely enough, that is, to maintain the parkway without having to resort to corporate advertising to foot a portion of the maintenance bill.

The public realm, which is continually being chipped away by private enterprise, is the first thing on the chopping block when local or state governments fiscally run short. The American River Parkway is the most accessible, most significant public realm we have in Sacramento...and there really aren't a whole hell of a lot of maintenance costs associated with it. Sure, there are asphalt trails that require regular work, but there aren't guardrails that continue to get smashed, Oleander bushes that need constant trimming and spraying, resurfacing due to overweight 7-axle tractor trailers, new overpasses, on-ramps and off-ramps to support ever distant, far-flung subdivisions, CHP overtime pay to cover floating holidays...

We don't hesitate to throw billions into the 'public realm' of the California highway system but can't pony up a few hundred thousand or so to throw at the few real civic places we have left. No...corporate advertising is forced upon us even on the bike trail. Honestly, I really wouldn't expect anything less from my Merika.

I doubt that outside the U.S. a corporation could adopt a carriageway, freeway, or Autobahn like U.S. companies can adopt a highway. This is galactically stupid...adopting a highway, and this one is particularly galling:

The Cracker Barrel touts itself as an Old Country Store. The problem is, we're running out of country because we're paving over every damn acre we have left to make room for more highways. What's the message here? A lady leaves her city and drives seventeen miles on a six-lane thruway to get to what remains of the country, only to find her Cracker Barrel subjected to the same damn building code ordinances that plague the urban city she just left. She arrives at her "old country store," (as all old stores are), surrounded by a quarter acre moat of illuminated asphalt parking spaces with never more than 35% of them occupied. She doesn't dare walk...although there are several dozen empty parking spaces available, she circles her motor vehicle and waits for a spot nearer the entrance:


This is Adopt A Highway. Corporate sponsorship of litter removal for a section of highway. She climbs back into her car with a fat belly from the restaurant and a twine-handled bag of country trinkets from the store. She gets back on the thruway and as she's driving she reaches over to get a head start on removing the plastic wrapping and price tags on the shit she just bought...she passes the Cracker Barrel adopt a highway sign and throws the plastic wrap out the window. Two weeks later, maintenance workers, now subsidized by the Barrel, remove her roadside trash.