Being one of the thousands of unfortunate motorists who have to grind through the horrid traffic brought about by the numerous, ill-timed road repairs being undertaken by the public works department, I find myself browsing the Internet while waiting for five minutes before getting to move an inch or two forward. I chanced upon a video of a song from Disney’s 1973 animated film, Robin Hood, which paralleled the way our road traffic conditions are going. The song’s title is also the title for this week’s article.
For those who aren’t familiar with the song or the film, the song talks about the plight of the people in the town of Nottingham. The lyrics of the song go like this: “Every town, has its ups and down. Sometime ups, outnumber the downs. But not in Nottingham. I’m inclined to believe, if we weren’t so down, we’d up and leave. We’d up and fly if we had wings for flyin.’ Can’t you see the tears we’re cryin’? Can’t there be some happiness for me? Not in Nottingham.” As you can see, this is a song that fits the plight of motorists of this metropolis.
As much as we are led to believe by the public works department that these road repairs are going to make our lives better in the future, the reality speaks the contrary. We’ve seen roads being dug up, and allegedly being ‘improved’ by being changed from asphalt to cement. After that, nothing. I must presume this is because the contractor’s job’s scope is just to resurface the road. Someone forgot to include the fact that after you repair roads, you will have to make sure that these roads have the proper safety accessories to ‘make our lives better.’ From the lack of reflective lane markings, to sufficient street lighting to allow motorists to actually see the unpainted road divider in the middle, the public works department are horribly failing at ‘making our lives better.’
This total lack of ability of doing their jobs right is not surprising. Just like the controversy surrounding that of an individual who was discovered to have been severely unqualified for a high position at our social security office, I’m pretty confident that the people who make the decisions at the public works office are equally as unqualified. They’re so unqualified that they reminded me of another individual who kept waving around his degree in crowd dynamics, claiming that his background and knowledge of such would allow him to be able to solve the growing traffic congestion at the Ban-Tal corridor. Guess what? It was actually a guy with a degree in business management, with a ton of common sense, that figured out how to ease the traffic in that corridor. If I got the crowd dynamics guy’s degree all wrong, it’s probably because it’s pretty insignificant considering it didn’t help him any.
It may seem like I’m randomly ranting. But if you look back, I’ve actually written about the good and bad about the traffic situation in our metropolis. Just like the song, and just like Nottingham, the ups do not outnumber the downs.