For all I gripe about the short shrift given to public transportation in the United States, I need to take a moment to be thankful for our highways. Vacation travel in my younger years was more picturesque, as we wandered through small towns and back roads. But if I-95 is boring, it makes the drive between Pennsylvania and Florida immeasurably more pleasant.
Even with the inevitable traffic jam around Washington, D.C., when your objective is to get from Point A to Point B, travelling 70 mph on a multi-lane road beats without question poking along at 30 mph on a two-lane road, behind a mile-long army convoy, through a construction zone. The only thing the latter has going for it is that it’s easier to find relief when the kids have to use the bathroom.
(If you travelled on New England’s highways yesterday, you may have a hard time believing that automobile travel could have been worse, and you might be right. I don’t think we ever experienced anything as bad as Massachusetts/Connecticut traffic on the Sunday after Thanksgiving—or just about any Friday night, for that matter. I refer you to my previous complaints about our lack of good public transit.)
