Whole Lot of Buildin' Goin' On

This past week I was fortunate to make a 1400 mile journey with one of my sons north to Central Oregon and back in two days.  It was two long days for someone used to a 5-minute bike ride to work.  Many wonderful sights were seen and some good conversations happened.

One reoccurring theme the entire time was road construction.  Construction sites started within 15 miles of home and continued for the next 700 miles north.  I don't travel much, though in the last six months I have been north and south to California's biggest cities and now into a major city in Oregon. The three major highways I traveled on those trips were all being refurbished, and they needed the work.  The delays at times became tiresome, and my fear of a speeding ticket bothered me, but the shear volume of work being done seemed more than I can ever remember.  It might have been because in most of my travels I was driving through the night and that is when most of the work takes place. Wish I had stock in generator light companies.

A few things came to mind during this last trip.  I mentioned the poor state of the roads themselves.  We in California travel on roadways a considerable amount, and there are many people traveling.  The roads are worn out and need repair.  In some of the cases the roads were being expanded. In the south the 405 and 99 here in Central CA are both being enlarged to handle more traffic safely.  Has anyone questioned if that is the wise path to follow?  Are there alternatives?

I was initially for the high speed rail in California, but have changed my mind.  I use Amtrak when I can and would prefer to see rail dollars go to make Amtrak better.  This last trip could not have been made on Amtrak because of the nature of the journey, but how many could? Should we rethink how we travel?

I also pondered how fast I was traveling, and the difficulty of the journey.  I will admit the inconvenience caused by the construction in reality was minimal.  It slowed us little and was more of an irritation.  There were only a few times that it felt truly dangerous and that was more because someone driving did something unwise because they were in a hurry.  But we were driving at night with little traffic.  What will happen if there is a situation with panic and many more vehicles? I thought a few times how I would have made the trip if this highway was clogged or unusable.  A family member made this exact trip and had to use other highways because of bad weather.  The normal 11-12 hours became 16 hours.  More bothersome is the roads used for that "detour" actually brought them closer to larger urban areas that would be dangerous and congested in a panic filled emergency situation.  It made me want to hunker down and not travel.

But that may not be an option.  Certainly I will be thinking about roads and travel some more.