June 6, 2005
Two rules for government
Alternative title: Why you can’t trust government (like you needed another reason)…
Q. How can you tell if a driver is from Chicago?
A. Every 20 miles, they stop and throw money out the window.
Heading north to see the family, I was subjected to the wonderful Chicago tollways. Chicago, despite what you may have heard, actually only has two seasons: Winter and Construction. The start of the “construction” season is signified by lane closures on highways all through Chicago, where heavy machinery is parked and lays dormant for the next several months. Or it might as well lay dormant, because the roads are terrible.
The Chicago tollway system was born a long, long time ago. At the time, they supported the idea of tolls with the inevitable lie that “once the roads are paid for, we’ll take off the tollbooths.” Uh huh. Right. I don’t know exactly how long ago those roads were paid for, but this time heading up there, all the tolls have doubled. And with bumps and potholes suitable only for a tracked vehicle, they can’t use the cost of road maintenance as an excuse. As with everything else in Chicago, the dollars earned from the tolls are funneled directly from Chicago drivers to union cronies.
So the two questions for anything government related that you will never get a straight answer to are “how much will it cost?”, and “when will it be done?” I think Boston is still waiting for the final numbers to come in on the “Big Dig”, but we’ll have to wait for completion or apocalypse to find that out, whichever comes first. I doubt anybody will remember any of this the next time politicians make a promise, but it’s worth a shot.
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Brad, They built the “Beltway toll systerm” here and said the same thing. They raised our tolls and I know that money isn’t all being used to repair the toll ways. I do have to say that the roads are in tip top shape.
The one place I hated to see the toll booths was in Orlando. We were taking a short cut over to Vero Beach one year and the closer you got to Orlando and the Disney complex the closer together the toll booths were. I remember seeing one toll booth just ahead of the one we were currently in. It was crazy. We will never take that short cut again.
So how was the wedding reception?