Saying that Washington, D.C. has a traffic problem is like saying Angelina Jolie has huge lips. It is too obvious to even utter. But if you spend time in it, you begin to realize some patterns that lend prescience to bigger issues.
Either the inner loop or the outer loop of the Beltway is always snarled. One flows smoothly, the other is gridlock. This is a recent law that was passed by both inept parties. There has to be gridlock somewhere, if not everywhere. Inside the Beltway, the streets are basically parking lots. Underground on the Metro, however, things move pretty well. The lesson: Everything in D.C. happens under the surface.
No mosquito can possibly survive the carbon monoxide within 20 miles of the city. Everyone is sucking everyone else’s tailpipe. This is not a metaphor.
Pierre Charles L’Enfant, a French-born American architect, designed Washington. It was rumored that the traffic circles were constructed to confuse the British. This has led me to believe that I must be British.
Interestingly, L’Enfant was not paid by the U.S. government for his services and died in poverty, leaving a few watches, compasses, instruments and maps, all totaling about $46 dollars. It is hardly ironic that the U.S. government screwed the very guy who planned its own capital city.
L’Enfant got the eternal last laugh, however, with those damned traffic circles. He was French, indeed.
