The stories so far are mainly about the disruption to Bay Area traffic and whether repairs will take weeks or months but I wonder if repairing the 80/580 interchange is the right thing to do. Regional public transportation agencies are making travel tomorrow free and significantly increasing capacity to accommodate people leaving their cars home for the day.
Gov. Schwarzenegger is in the area tonight, announcing he’s declared a disaster so that emergency funds will be available and normal contracting rules suspended to speed repairs. He’ll even ask the Bushinator to add federal emergency status and money.
But wouldn’t the better answer be to clean up the mess but leave the roads unrepaired? Let’s use this as a means to get hundreds or thousands of cars carrying only a single person back and forth off the road five days a week and increase the very low public transit ridership numbers. Heck, maybe the incident can be leveraged to get commuters in other parts of the Bay Area not directly affected onto trains and buses too.
I know, I know, I’m dreaming. Would be nice though, especially in this allegedly eco-aware region.
BillSaysThis 