Building Better Barriers

Lost over the past several months, completely lost, is any discussion regarding Obama's promise to prioritize green job creation.

No, all we're getting are jobs to build or improve more fucking roads.

I ride my bike over highway 50 at the 59th street over crossing three times a week, and there's a median construction project to convert the old median (a metal barrier) to a full concrete barrier. No new lanes. It just adds height to the median so that accidents on the west-bound side don't slow down traffic on the east-bound side due to rubbernecking, and vice versa. $30,000,000. Thirty million to build a better barrier. The old one was absolutely adequate in my opinion...it was effective in stopping all those ultra-commuters who fall asleep commuting a hundred and twelve miles a day from ramming on-coming traffic. Apparently, it did nothing to stop the six thousand commuters from slowing down to observe the carnage and wreckage when they do crash...so I get to help pay for it.

The other highway 50 project is the building of HOV lanes in El Dorado county...trying to shoehorn in as many El Dorado commuters into the Sacramento valley as possible...because El Dorado has no economy of its own. Thus, this arrangement forcibly requires most of its residents to commute to Sacramento county to earn money to pump back into El Dorado...the consequence being that the vast majority of their residents commute 60+ miles a day to get to work and back. This is where my sales tax dollars are going...to fund this project.

Every time I eat lunch at Tres Hermanas in Sacramento, (close enough to walk or by transit), I get to pay tax on my meal so that El Dorado county shitheads can commute from their 4,000 sq ft starter mansions in the foothills to jobs in the valley. Perhaps I, one of means, should just give up and do the same. Buy a McMansion in the foothills, solo commute every day and through the power of money and influence convince local officials that this is the perfect arrangement -- allow rich, organized residents to create better commuting options through poor, disorganized regions. Commute right through Folsom (a slum compared to Cameron Park and Shingle Springs), right through Rancho Cordova (Lagos of the Valley), through La Riveria (the asshole of the Valley) into downtown Sacramento where the jobs are.

This is how my region has developed, and is the exact same in every other region in the United States -- suburban slums filled with multiple car owning Merikans commuting through earlier tiers of suburban slums to non-local jobs.

It would not be hard to understand why I would welcome nine dollar gasoline.