After having watched as I drove around the construction alongside the highway here this past summer, I took the above picture of the guy on a bike trying to get his groceries home. This is evidently the future they have planned for the next few generations as they slowly progress towards a time and space where owning a vehicle will be so prohibitive in cost that the majority won't be able to afford one.
This is some serious stuff, you don't invest in this kind of infrastructure in a state that has basically three, maybe four months out of the year of good weather unless you mean business that the future holds no chance of the majority of people owning cars. Each side of the freeway there is alternating one way streets. On this one way street they left one lane for traffic, put in a barrier and left space for a bike lane that can run both directions.
If you had to ask me where the funding is coming from my guess it's from the piles being handed out to "rebuild communities of color". I think if they said to people this is your kids and grand children's future we're investing in with your tax dollars there would be a huge outcry. Not that there wasn't a huge outcry in local social media blogs calling the newly installed lanes along the highway a big waste of taxpayers' money. Speaking of such I found it rather odd one morning showing at the bus stop with my grandkids one morning there was a group of young elementary age kids in the parking lot on bikes. This is seven o'clock in the morning, so I am assuming it's a ride your bike to school day and not a show up at seven a.m. to ride your bike around the retailers parking lot they assembled at. If you put the entire green energy agenda into perspective it would take years to build the infrastructure needed to transition to bikes, rails or buses to get to school or work. These youngsters are more than likely in the "indoctrination phase" of that future transition. They were onto some serious business here complete with a county sheriff to make sure they would be alright. I didn't stick around to see if he led them down the road with flashers blazing a safe passage or not, but it would be hard for me to think of another reasonable explanation why they'd all be there at seven a.m. I guess there could be one, I just can't think of what it would be.
Every single street, plus some that aren't, going under construction are being revamped to include bike lanes but nothing as intensive as the one alongside the highway. It looks as though they are dead serious you will pedal harder faster to get to work. They just took it upon themselves that the people living alongside the highway who have to park in the street wouldn't mind having to tunnel themselves through snow another ten, fifteen feet to get to their cars in the morning. I am one hundred percent sure the city will go through the expense of hiring additional personnel to keep those bike lanes open, but I highly doubt they'll be shoveling pathways for the homeowners inconvenienced here.
With the inflation reduction act they got a lot of funding to go toward their 2030 climate agenda. Once that was accomplished they moved onto the next phase after all of a sudden making claims it wasn't as urgent and could move their goals to 2050. Well, you are looking at the beginning of 2050. It's going to take years upon years to finish the entire length of the highway system. Not to mention to decide upon where these rail systems are going to go into place and the funding for them. Right now the talk is of a rail system that will get you all the way to the lake shore. I really wouldn't be counting on being able to drive yourself to the beach someday. Not that you'll be able to just freely hope aboard for a fun leisure day at the beach, chances are you'll need to have done a hundred pushups a day, have a good credit score, and a good social credit score of having just loved living in your new fifteen-minute city. Oh, excuse me, your new "walkable community".
I guess there's an upside to all this extensive reconstruction along the highway, at least they a have barrier keeping them out of the flow of traffic. I mean once they get around to riding down them, right now it's less than a ninety-nine-point nine percent chance you'll even see anyone riding in them. I was telling my son probably around the time he reaches middle age chances are cars will be so expensive you won't be able to afford one and as far out as you work you'll have to take a rail out to work since buses don't go out there, get dropped at a corner and have to walk the rest of the way like the buses do in the city. I said look how extensive this is and for what, do you actually see anyone riding a bike. This is the future I told him, just like you see all those empty store fronts being built below apartments that have been sitting empty for the last four, five years. I told him investors don't leave places empty while heating, keeping the lights on, and insuring them unless there's a bigger agenda involved. Instead, they'd just stop building them, which they aren't, or they'd convert them to much needed housing, but they don't. Speaking of much needed housing spaces....where is that justice for communities of color?