Post Office
Think Nevada�s roads are terrible? Feel free to consider Chicago�s
Allow me to respond to your most recent cover story [�Highways to Hell,� February]. I live on the North Shore of Chicago, one of the most affluent areas in the entire United States with some of the poorest roads I�ve seen anywhere in the country. Several times a week, I must follow a convoluted labyrinth, bordered by orange cones and wooden signs that constantly jut out into my path, as if asking to be bumped into. I am distressed to remind myself that it had once been a single, straight traffic lane with kilometer-long cracks and potholes. It is said that there are only two seasons in Chicago, winter and construction, and, each winter, the roads are battered so extensively that the same stretches must be incessantly repaired every consecutive year.
It may seem paradoxical that technological improvements correlate with deteriorating road quality and lifespan. However, technology is not to blame. Though the typical layman in Chicago will overlook it, his �public� roads are meant to require constant maintenance! A brief glimpse at the depth that a typical road stretches as it is being excavated during construction will show that it extends no further than a quarter-meter from its surface, and contains no more than two layers of asphalt or concrete. Pressure from thousands of multi-ton vehicles traversing it for 365 days is almost certain to strain the surface beyond its capacity to endure, and, once the surface gives way, the entire road must crack or collapse due to its infinitesimal thinness. The Romans� elementary solution to this phenomenon was to make the road deeper and thicker. Surely, 2,000 years of engineering progress could not have nullified this commonsense observation!��
Yet, while engineering has progressed, government has not. This is crucial to note, since it is the government of the City of Chicago that wields absolute control over its roads. The government creates them and has the responsibility for maintaining them, but it also has a few construction companies in its constituency. In a welfare state, where the parties supporting a politician�s campaign can expect a slice of the economic �pie� in return, maintaining the ability to distribute the taxpayers� wealth to any favored special interest lobby, and retaining a veneer of legitimacy while doing so, is critical for any politician who seeks to remain in office.
G. S.
Illinois
