In a small hospital in the city of Chicago, a little boy lies in fear upon a comfortable bed. Bruce Willis sits beside him, questioning the cause of such terror. He asks, “Do you see road construction?” The boy nods meekly. “Where?” Bruce asks. The boy answers, “Everywhere!”
I’ve been living in the city of Chicago my entire life, and never before have I seen as much construction on the road as there is today. It took a little while for me to notice all the change. At first there was minor road construction here and minor road construction there. I didn’t see anything exceptionally terrible until one day, while traveling to Wisconsin, I made my way through miles and miles of construction. For the longest time there were construction cones and concrete blocks and torn up roadway, a project that wasn’t going to be finished for another three years.
And that was before the major boom that happened ever so recently, after an infusion of new works came in, mostly due to new policy from the Obama administration. The reason for this infusion is simple; to get Americans working. More road workers must have equated to more road work projects, and these projects were no longer limited to a little bit here and a little bit there. All roads seem susceptible to tear down and fixing, all at the same time.
It’s not that none of these roads under construction need the work. I’m sure some of them do. The problem that I see is that there are a lot of different projects that are started up, while others remain unfinished. It appears as though the city doesn’t know what to do with such a large surplus of new roadwork employees. The reason for this is simple: these are not jobs that were given to people to fill empty positions throughout the city. Rather, these jobs were granted to people to provide jobs. My solution is not to stop the road construction that’s under way entirely, nor is it to fire all the new employees that were brought in. What I would like to see is some sort of focus on what is being fixed. I’d like to see the roads that really need the work get the work. And maybe, just maybe, when a long strip of road is under construction, that these extra workers will be spread out along the whole strip working simultaneously, rather than a small group from one end to the other at a few feet per day.