Too Much Progress
Posted by pattya on February 25, 2009
When I first moved to my neighborhood, it was the quietest place in town. My house was way out on the outskirts, and even though my lot was a pretty average size, I had plenty of room because my neighbors all had the good sense to leave two lots in between theirs and mine when they bought.
Even though we were only about a twenty-minute commute from the city, everything was perfectly serene, which was nice for me since I came from the Midwest. I’d been a little nervous about taking a job in a big city on the West Coast until I found this area. The commute was the best part of living where I did. Sure, it was twenty minutes, but there was no traffic, no cops and no construction as far as the eye could see.
Over the years, though, the commute has gotten worse and worse. About four years, ago, people started moving into my neighborhood, which wasn’t so bad-I like having a good sized community-but the traffic to the city started getting a little bit heavier with each passing month. It was no rush hour, but it was getting a little crowded on the two-lane highway. Unfortunately, around the same time, people started moving out of the city and building out, and every few months the construction would creep farther out.
Now, they are building malls and condos all the way up to within a couple miles of my neighborhood, and they are widening the highway to accommodate the higher volume of traffic. Instead of open land as far as the mountains on my commute, the only view I have is of scaffolding, cranes, gravel screening machines, compost screens and various other construction machines and materials. The worse part is the bulldozers and portable screening machines on the highway going from one site to another that hold up traffic at all times of day.