Freeway Revolts

Between Franklin Blvd. and MLK Jr Blvd. I ride my bike along 41st Avenue to cross over Highway 99. 41st is one of the few streets that connect the two sides of South Sacramento that was filleted in half like a salmon in the early 1960's in the name of progress. Call it poetic justice that Highway 99's expansion to allow early white Elk Grovians easy motoring through poor, brown South Sacramento has given way to discussions on the future Capitol Southeast Connector that will slice east Elk Grove in half with 22,000 cars per day. You know what? Fuck 'em -- they get what's due them for sixty years of commuting through other "communities" of Sacramento County. Sorry if their bucolic acres will abut the sound walls of a freeway or six-lane expressway -- they've done the same damn thing to others for sixty years because Elk Grove has no jobs of its own.

But wait! East Elk Grove is wealthy! And connected! And organized! Those non-wealthy disorganized politically disconnected brown Sacramentans, well, they can always move if they don't want to hear the din of the freeway but East Elk Grove is different! It's special! It's a beautiful "community" that provides boundless enjoyment for its residents! To route a freeway through this community would be tantamount to original sin!

The website for this project has an absolutely fantastic tag line -- Connecting Communities. Yes, it will! It will allow for the easy connection of housal unit 6 on the future Dunmore Homes tract 27 off Kammerer Rd. to commercial unit twelve in the future Quail Hollow Crossings strip retail plaza in Folsom, some twenty seven miles distant. Yep. This sounds exactly like connecting communities to me.

What? What's that I hear? There's a freeway revolt? Some people don't want this connector? What the fuck is wrong with them? Don't they know they are standing in the way of PROGRESS? Don't they know that adding new road capacity always adds value to the communities that it touches? What is wrong with these people!