For reasons that are difficult to understand, Thursday mornings are particularly unpleasant times to drive to work in the morning [1] in the course of the week. Today, for example, it took me two hours to drive to work, and it would have taken longer had I not gotten off of I-5 at the earliest possible exit to drive the back way over the hills, the route I usually take on the way home. This particular time, unlike previous cases, it was very obvious what was causing the trouble. Specifically, there had been an accident involving a tractor trailer on the Marquam Bridge on I-5 southbound, involving the spilling of a large amount of gasoline and all of the lanes of I-5 Southbound being closed off for several hours while the cleanup took place, and being diverted to I-405. By the time I had been at work an hour, the lanes were opened to traffic once again, where they were no doubt nearly immediately crowded with the remnants of the rush hour traffic that had not been able to find alternate routes earlier.

This was not the only somewhat ominous travel experience that I had noted today. As I was departing my apartment complex, I noticed a couple of DOT trucks in the middle lane that had stopped and were putting out traffic cones for some sort of work. I wonder what work that was, whether it was repaving or surveying or what. Earlier this week, my apartment complex had dropped off a form to fill out to tell what vehicles belong to us to make sure that the precious and few parking spaces are used in the most effective manner, since the complex does not appear to wish to construct any new ones despite acknowledging the increasing crowding as a result of the housing crisis of the Portland-Vancouver area [2] and the total lack of vacancies as being heavily involved. Not only this, but there was a connection as well to the audiobook I am currently listening to, The Big Short, which examines the problems that led to the housing bubble of the early 2000’s, which is a root cause of the current lack of housing available at present, as well as the lack of infrastructure that results when incomes and taxes fall and as banks become skittish about lending money to those who wish to borrow it for financing home construction or purchase.

There are a few related concerns that one deals with in an overdetermined problem like the lack of general infrastructure. On the one hand, scarcity of resources often prevents people from being able to effectively work on adding or maintaining infrastructure, but the fact that people can profit from an absence of infrastructure may also hinder the diversion of such resources into increasing flow and capacity because of concerns that even if such projects would be useful for the larger area as a whole, they may hurt those who are profiting from the way things are. In a sense, the situation can be a bit of a catch-22, in that those who would benefit from infrastructure are seldom able to pay for it themselves, and those who have the means to do so lack the will or the interest to do so, for one reason or another. This is true whether the infrastructure is bridges over a river, highways to move people around, and parking spots and housing for people to enjoy at the beginning and ending of their often lengthy days.

We ought to be especially careful about the solutions that we choose for problems because temporary fixes can easily become permanent solutions that shape the terrain in which choices can be made. Likewise, people far too easily think of restrictions in the face of scarcity rather than thinking of expansion. To be sure, there can be occasions where people build bridges to nowhere in the thought that if one builds capacity than demand will follow, which does not necessarily work out, but there are also many occasions where people believe that artificially keeping supply limited will eventually reduce demand, and all that does is make for a lot of people in difficult or even miserable circumstances. We would be better served to live and act with thoughtfulness about what is best for other people, and if we fail, we should fail with good intentions and acting as wisely as possible, not being miserly and hard-hearted, and too clever for our own good, as can occasionally be the case. Sometimes one never gets the chance to be right next time when one gets it wrong this time.

[1] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2016/04/27/can-we-taco-bout-it/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2016/04/15/cleopatra-isnt-the-only-queen-of-denial/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2016/04/03/all-over-creation/

[2] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2016/03/04/some-minutes-of-the-vancouver-affordable-housing-community-forum-meeting-part-one/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2016/03/11/some-minutes-of-the-vancouver-affordable-housing-community-forum-meeting-part-two/