Boston has done a bang-up job of reducing traffic congestion by building about 3 miles of High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes at a cost of around a quarter of a billion dollars. Just kidding - the lanes are rarely used.
"That system was built looking towards the future, not the present," said Mac Daniel, spokesman for the Turnpike. "We acknowledge the lanes aren't being used as much as they could."
Nice try, Mac. Unfortunately, the "crystal ball" that your "planners" use is less reliable than a coin toss.
The high-occupancy vehicle lanes were conceived nearly two decades ago to allow the Big Dig to meet state and federal clean-air rules by encouraging shared commutes. At the time, traffic planners believed Americans would carpool in droves if given an incentive, such as special-access lanes, and fewer cars would mean less pollution. But by the time the Boston lanes opened, many of those same engineers had concluded that HOV lanes did little to ease traffic gridlock.
The response of highly-paid government "planners" to situations such as the above is uniformly predictable: "Oh. That didn't work, but it'll be great in the future. And in the meantime, we have a better plan". But here's the question we need to be asking:
Why do we pay salaries and benefits to government "planners" in the first place? It isn't government's job to "plan". Their job is to provide police and fire protection, and to external threats to our safety.
There's nothing in their job description that states that they get to "plan" how and where you will live. Or whether you will drive, bike, or walk. These are your choices, yet government seems to think that they get a definitive say. They don't. And it's time to start pushing back. Their latest scam is "complete streets". Dont get fooled again.
