On the Highway40/64 Closure - Another Opinion
This article by Andrew Rochman appeared in the Citizen Journal 11/28/07
MoDOT’s I-64 plan not commonly good
The impending three-year revamping of Interstate 64 is supposedly for the common good. MODOT’s extended approach brings to mind other community restructurings that were for the common good.
Prior to 1955, Highway 40 (now I-64) east of Skinker Boulevard was separated from Highway 40 west of Brentwood Boulevard by homes of nearly 300 Brentwood and Richmond Heights families. You had to get off the highway at Skinker and connect via Clayton Road at Brentwood. Then, on behalf of the common good, these homes were bulldozed and the highway gap bridged. We are beholden to these displaced families.
Likewise, we are grateful to those sacrificial lambs who involuntarily abandoned their homes so that we could have the Ritz-Carlton, Galleria, Brentwood Promenade and Pointe, Richmond Heights Boulevard and future retail bastions. And not long ago, the trek from Clayton Road to Manchester Road via Hanley Road, including a QuikTrip stop to buy a Powerball ticket, took less than five minutes. Then, much needed food chains and got-everything stores and their accompanying morass of traffic turned the journey into a 10 to 15 minute trip. Again, it was for the common good, so we endured.
However, in each instance, the daily lives of relatively few were seriously affected by the construction. Downtown was not jeopardized. Businesses were not subjected to potential ruin. Those requiring emergency medical attention were not put at risk. Recovering from major power outages was not impeded by closed highways.
We forget sometimes that we are simply grains of biodegradable silt. Plop, plop, fizz, fizz and then it’s over, but the common good survives. It seems selfish to place our own pursuit of happiness above the common good, even though it would be polite of the common good to give us some consideration — though sacrificing ourselves for a noble cause is somewhat appealing.
And what could be more praiseworthy than trading our sanity for the much-needed (so we are told) expanded access to and from I-64, especially when the upgrades are required to continue enjoying federal subsidy? After all, a highway driver unfamiliar with the area presently has one pip of a time finding a McDonalds. However, three — and hopefully only three — years of inconvenience, increased gas consumption, road rage and emergency vehicles delayed precious seconds doesn’t seem very common good-like.
Maybe a better plan would be to close down the entire mess for six months and deploy construction workers 24-7? History suggests there’s simply got to be a better alternative than MoDOT’s prolonged, agonizing approach.
It took less than 16 months to demolish and haul away New York City’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel and erect the 102-story Empire State Building. That was in 1931-32, before computers served as engine as created missiles that can be guided through a window 17,000 miles away with the push of a button.
We communicate without wires and can store massive amounts of data on a disk the size of a half-dollar. With all of the American ingenuity and mysterious technology, isn’t it reasonable to believe MoDOT’s best and brightest could have architected a plan that was shorter, more thoughtful, less disruptive, safer and certainly less excruciating than the scheduled arrangement?
I am all for the common good as long as it is commonly good. Instead of laying out a commonly good plan, MoDOT laid an egg.
Andrew Rochman of Clayton is one of 17 West County area Opinion Shapers. Opinion Shapers are guest writers who submit a column three times a year on areas of interest to them. Rochman is a selfemployed pension actuary.
http://citizenjournal.stltoday.com/articles/2007/11/28/opinions/sj2tn20071127-1128wcj_opshaper.ii1.prt 11/28/2007 8:42:42 AM