Transportation Center Director Randal O’Toole is sick and tired of people blaming highways – and the mobility they provide – for urban decay, sprawl, and poverty. Randal writes in the Greeley Tribune, “Blaming the highways for planners’ poor ideas is the same as blaming a two-by-four for an architect’s poor building design.” In other words, blame the central planners and their disastrous plans, not the inanimate objects from which we reap benefits – like mobility and convenience.
Randal saves his most scathing critique towards the end of the piece when he points out, “Ironically, the people who blame highways for planners’ idiotic ideas from the 1950s are usually the ones who support planners’ idiotic ideas of today.” Ouch.
But hey, they just might get it right this time.
