Rantage About Roads

Dear San Antonio Road Planning People,


Do you guys actually have degrees in urban planning or civil engineering or something else that's an equivalent of that? If so, which school(s) did you attend? I'd like to know the answer to that so I won't ever say to anyone, "You know, you really should look at [x] -- that's a quality institution."

I had to go in to work last night for yet another overnight shift. I had left plenty of time for me to get in to work on time and thought that since the portion of my commute that usually gives me the most consternation didn't really give me much of any, that I was home free. I was even planning a nice, relaxing pre-shift period of leisurely listening to my iPod while tucking myself into a book. But then came The Accident.

The last leg of my commute to work consists of a single, lengthy road that my workplace is located in the middle of. There are no other ways to hook directly into this road aside from this one, direct route that I know very well. I cannot, for example, go down another road, then cut across and end up at a segment of this road. There is one other option to get onto this road, but it involves going down a winding, indirect, and poorly lit highway. So far, though, I haven't found any cause for concern regarding this distinct lack of commute choices. That is, of course, until last night's accident.

I was coming down this lengthy road, happy as can be that I was making good time, when I saw road flares and a police vehicle blocking the rest of the pathway. "Uh oh," I remember thinking, "What's going on here?" That's when a police officer came up to me and said, "Sorry, there's been an accident up ahead. You're going to have to turn back." Turn back? TURN BACK? I need to get down this road! This road is where work is! And it's too late for me to call out! Besides, this is the only way I know how to get to work! So the police officer not-so-helpfully gave me vague, "Go THERE"-type directions to go around to where it is I needed to go to. (BTW, the police officer incident made me wonder how he got his sparkling, friendly personality.) (That's sarcasm, just in case you didn't know.) So after a couple of misdirections, I finally managed to find my way in to work.

A commute that should have taken me 30 minutes? Took me an hour instead.

Which got me to wondering -- what kind of bozo set up the road system to where there were any other feasable alternatives to this one route? I'm not talking about highways, I'm talking "side streets", which I've already found to be the most direct option anyway. (Which does also factor into this discussion.) Why can't there be at least two different ways to get from point A to point B for these lengthy routes, so that in case option 1 happens to be blocked for some reason, people can automatically opt for option 2. And why was there this confusing, badly labeled and highly inconvenient option that was the only one that could be posed in this situation? I choose not to drive down highways, so this forcing me to go onto a highway anyway was not advantageous to anyone. Thankfully it was late enough at night that few people were on this highway, but I dread to think what might have happened had more people been inconvenienced by my inexperience on the highway.

In fairness, I do happen to work in a lightly developed part of the city, so maybe there will be other routes and options somewhere down the line. Though it does strike me as strange that a segment of town with several large employers situated therein would not have had more developing done to it so that all of those employees could get to work without having to worry if there's an accident on the very road their workplace is located on.