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Well at last the gridlock starts to make sense.

From yesterday’s newspaper:

Don Nozzi, senior planner for the city of Gainesville and author of a book on sprawl, said smaller roads actually reduce gridlock by encouraging bike and bus riding.

“We simply cannot build (or) widen our way out of congestion,” he said.
Gainesville Sun, March 1, 2006

Ooooookaayyyyy.

As Dr. Phil might say at this juncture, “How’s that working out for you?”

So to counteract such wonderful thinking, here are some inexpensive ideas that will alleviate the traffic problem right now.

1. Before we spend a bundle timing all the lights, take some of them down.

   On 13th Street, do we really need lights at University Avenue, SW 2nd Ave, 4th Ave, 5th Ave, 8th Ave, 9th Ave, 9th Road, Archer Road, and 16th?

   SW 4th Avenue opens west onto a no-entry service drive for UF, so that can come down.

   SW 5th Ave opens west onto a exit-only one-way road from UF, that one can go into “blink mode” outside of afternoon rush hour.

2. Test all the lights to be sure they’re sensing traffic properly.

   A motor vehicle is least efficient when it is stopped with the engine running. It is also inefficient to change states between moving and stopping.

   I average about five minutes a week sitting at lights with no traffic moving in any direction. That’s about four hours a year of idling away gas– for one person who doesn’t drive that much in the first place. Multiply that times all the vehicles on the road and you are wasting a major chunk of petroleum with no benefit whatsoever– not to mention causing additional pollution.

   Want some examples of broken lights? How about the SW 16th Avenue by the VA hospital? Williston Road at SW 23rd Terrace? Depot Avenue and SW 6th Street? These signals are apparently responding to signals directly from space rather than anything pertaining to actual traffic.

3. Take down the “No Turn On Red” signs.

   Except for limited-sight intersections, there really isn’t any point to having them.

4. Shorten the interval at the big intersections.

   This concept is the simplest, but also the most influential. Shorter intervals keep the traffic flowing, instead of releasing large clumps of frustrated motorists into smaller intersections that don’t have the capacity to deal with them.

   I think the DOT knows this, because when SW 13th went one-lane for construction, the traffic backup was so bad that they had no choice but to reduce the interval at the SW 16th Avenue light– and even with one lane, the traffic flowed.

Before closing, I must point out one more extremely important aspect. Overlooked in all this mess is egregious financial abuse that our elected representatives have allowed to persist.

As I understand it, a considerable chunk of my tax dollars was allocated to fund roadways. Some city planner with a point to prove has decided, without mandate or authority, that the roadways will not be built.

All well and good. But if the roadways I paid for will not be built, I would like to know how soon I can expect my refund.

From the missing-the-point department:

A Missouri university did a series of tests to measure the rates at which different kinds of socks maintain moisture and abrade surfaces.

Their stated reason was laudable: they wanted to find the composition that causes the fewest blisters when playing games such as basketball.

Had they gone to any schoolyard pickup game, they’d know that basketball players always put on two pairs of socks, one over the other. That way the friction is between the sliding layers of sock, and not between the sock and the skin.

Not to say that the study results doesn’t have some value. But I’m going no further. As an occasional writer of humor, this is like shooting mackerel in a Tupperware glass. I have my standards.

Whine steward Andy Rooney quipped:

I can’t think of many sounds more annoying than the sound of a motorcycle.

Coming from anyone but him or, say, Pee Wee Herman, that wouldn’t be ironic.

Somebody in the paper today actually accused Bush of being a terrorist. And that made me think:

I guess he snuck into Iraq
under cover of broad daylight,
rebuilt hospitals and churches,
installed a democratic government,
opened the schools and colleges,
vaccinated hundreds of thousands of children,
flushed out al-Qaeda,
restarted the economy,
trained their security forces,
provided interim defense for the country,
and started restoring women’s rights,
all in the name of striking terror
into the hearts of Iraqis.

If he’s a “terrorist”, seems to me he’s not a very good one.

Now of course, Bush has some shortcomings.

Everybody does. I still have lots of teeth marks in my tongue from eight years of Clinton.

But I’d be lying if I said I was sure that I’d face a test like September 11 as well as the President did.

I also think that almost anyone who’s being completely honest with themselves could make the same statement.

So somebody in the paper today accused Bush of being a terrorist. And that made me think:

One of the little-discussed benefits
of having a society that encourages free speech
is that it makes it easier to figure out
who’s been willing and able
to think seriously about an issue
before forming an opinion,
and who shouldn’t be trusted with anything
much more valuable
than a used match.

I’ve never had anything against shock-jock Howard Stern. He’s witty and most of the stuff he does is just show.

But a couple of nights ago he was on Larry King suggesting that everyone should subscribe to satellite radio.

His proposal was that, for $12.95 a month, you could get all this wonderful content. And you’d spend way more than $12.95 just to go to the movies these days. And there’d be no commercials!

I shuddered.

That’s almost the exact same argument that the cable industry sold us to get us off broadcast television.

Then the SuperStations came along, and the cable companies didn’t block their local ads. So more cable channels started running ads.

Now we pay way more than the cost of a movie just to watch television– and there are more ads than there ever were on broadcast. And we are paying for the “privilege” of watching them.

So, Howard, how long before an advertising-driven channel creeps its way into the xmsphere? Something really valid like NFL or Major League Baseball, or just a really popular talk or music program?

How long after that before there are as many ads on satellite radio as there were on broadcast radio?

This isn’t just complaining about advertisments. It’s a possibility that should concern everyone, and here’s why.

If advertising dollars move to the xmsphere (and the cable example suggests that, eventually, they will) then those dollars will not be going to independent broadcast radio. And advertising is their major source of income. The few that survive will be forced to join a conglomerate just to stay afloat.

That means that there will no longer be a delivery method for open, unencumbered, independent speech. You want to listen to your music and talk shows, but you don’t have the cash? Sorry, you’re out of luck.

And while your local broadcast station will still be around, they’re going to say-and-play what the home office tells them to… including the information that influences how you decide to vote.

So $12.95 a month for the privilege of listening to the broadcast that I now get for free? That’s a compelling offer, Howard.

But I have a better one.

Unfortunately I’d need to be on satellite radio to tell you what it is.

Well, days later we now have an Official patch for the .wmf vulnerability.

If the mere existence of such sloppy code doesn’t infuriate you, consider this: Every time you upgraded your Windows operating system, you paid again for that same busted DLL.

CTOs and CIOs shouldn’t be worrying about how to get past this particular crisis.

They shoud instead be considering two much more important questions:

First, what else is vulnerable that no one (yet) knows about?

Second, what would the impact on your business be if tomorrow you couldn’t run the OS you’re currently using?

My belief in the superiority of the open-source software model is no secret, so I’m going to pass on this opportunity to do some (well-deserved) Microsoft-bashing.

The most important point is this: If you’re overly dependent on a single point of failure– any single point of failure– you should be thinking about contingency plans.

In this case, a solution such as creating bootable Linux or FreeBSD CDs, or booting a small distro from the network, may mean the difference between hours of downtime and continuing to function.

In Macbeth, Shakespeare described his moving-target, things-are-not-what-they-seem Birnam Wood. Gainesville has its own version, the “People Would”.

Like Bigfoot, no one has ever seen this mystical “People Would”, but pundits and politicians have routinely used it to justify all sorts of exciting and insane infrastructural meddling, from downtown parking to bicycle lanes to roundabouts, sales tax increases, bus routes, Wal-Mart placement, East side development… the list goes on.

The problems come when the predicted actions of the “People Would” don’t match up with what the actions the predictor would personally take– especially when the predictor is trying to get “revenue” out of the “People Would”, acting as though that money wasn’t coming out of your pocket and mine.

My favorite is the list of (mostly futile) actions taken to increase bicycle traffic in the city. “If we narrow the streets…”, “If we charge for parking…”, “If we lengthen the wait at stop lights…”, “If we install (hideously expensive) bicycle lanes…”, “If we create a ‘Rails To Trails’ across the area…”, “If we had a ‘Yellow Bike’ system…”

“…then ‘People Would’ ride their bicycles more often, reducing traffic and pollution and America’s dependence on oil and All Sorts Of Other Good Stuff™.”

But the damn “People Would” won’t cooperate.

Possibly that’s because of a certain elephant in the room called Common Sense– for example, the six months out of the year when it’s too insanely muggy to ride to work, or the two months out of the year when it’s too insanely cold, or the distributed two months when it’s raining (insanely, of course).

The two months when it’s nice enough, “People Would” might indeed ride its collective bicycles– or just walk. The rest of the year, it had better get the roadways it paid its taxes for, or else it might start demanding a refund.

Bottom line is, the few of the “People Would” who ride anyway, would and do ride. The rest of the “People Would” don’t, for the wholly valid reasons stated above and others.

Some other great examples of the predicted actions of “People Would” not matching reality?

“‘People Would’ be willing to pay an increased tax to support (insert supposedly popular pet project)”. (Common Sense Reality: History says, no, the “People Would” not– having shut down tax proposals at the polls year after year. Even when the Judiciary put its knee on the community’s throat and said, “You WILL build us a new courthouse”, the “People Would” was looking for ways out of it.)

“If we eliminate free parking downtown and create garages, ‘People Would’ be willing to provide a new revenue stream.” (Common Sense Reality: Or, more likely, ‘People Would’ just go to the mall, where parking is free and usually plentiful– the plan thereby backfiring, with downtown merchants taking the punishment.)

“If we make the traffic lights as inefficient as we possibly can, causing backups, gridlock and delays; then pass insanely high traffic ticket rates on red-light runners, and pipe those revenues to some vital-sounding pet pork like ‘Trauma Center Funding’, then the ‘People Would’ not recognize what we’re doing and form a lynch mob.” (Common Sense Reality: You guys are so busted.)