I Don’t Want To Spend This Much Time On Traffic Jams. How About You? listentoyourdreams.com/2018/04/05/traffic-jams/ Davy
April 5, 2018
In life, we spend a lot of time waiting. We wait for red lights to turn green, for level crossings to open after the train passes by, for blocking delivery trucks to unload their goods, for our next paycheck, for traffic jams to clear up again and so on. If you search for traffic jams on the internet, you will see that the roads are becoming increasingly congested. Our nature is to want to be independent. Most of us don’t like to be dependent on others. There are lots of reasons why people don’t want to carpool. Like they don’t like asking others to pick up their kids from school or they need to go to the grocery store. People think it is inappropriate to ask these kinds of things of others who probably want to go straight home after work. These are just a few examples of why we want to be in control of our transportation.
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In the early seventies, people were happy to have a car in the family. Nowadays, most of us have a car from the moment we need to go to work. Dad, mom, sister, brother… and there’s the reason why our roads are damaged so quickly. Everybody wants to have their own transportation. And I do understand it, I’m one of them. So, what about public transportation you say? Why not take the train or bus? There are many reasons why people don’t want to do this: Not on time, canceled because of roadworks, too crowded, too far away from the place where we need to be, and people don’t always feel safe walking alone from the bus or train station all the way home. From one problem to another. More cars, more traffic jams, more roadworks, less time to spend with your beloved friends and family. I don’t know how the quality of the road network is in your region, but here in Belgium, we say “you feel when you are crossing the border” because of the holes in the road. And if it’s not a hole, then it’s a pile of asphalt that’s been used to fill up the hole. On rainy evenings you can hardly discern the difference between a filled up hole and “something” on the road that you need to avoid. The costs of the repairs on the roads are sky-high, we pay big taxes for all these repairs. One of the reasons why they repair the road instead of renewing it is the cost of it. It’s a vicious circle because repair is temporary, and soon it needs to be repaired again, and again. Especially in the winter when they use lots of salt to de-ice the roads, which is extremely harsh for the pavement. Scientists work on so-called anti-freeze roads. Highways that never freeze should make gritting trucks superfluous and prevent accidents. A special concrete mix, studded with electricity-conducting ingredients, could help airports
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and other places run on time during inclement weather. In the departments of French Yvelines, Doubs and Tarn, heated road sections have been introduced to see if they can be kept free of snow with “positive energy”, which would make it unnecessary to scatter salt. How do you feel about this? Are you also one of the people whose away from home every day to go to work? Wouldn’t it be great to work from anywhere you want? No more waiting for all the traffic jams and losing so much time. A life of freedom that allows you to do your job whenever you want and where you want. Think about it. Why would we still travel to work every day and lose so much time, time we can use to do other things instead of waiting for the hurdle to move on.
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