The Highways in Mexico City

   Before posting the piece I had planned for today, I want to say a few words about Gwen Ifill who died just over a week ago. I did not know her and except for a few pieces she wrote in the NYTimes some years ago, I know her only from her role on the PBS Newshour which I have watched fairly regularly. When recently she was out for some time it did not occur to me that she was deathly ill. Hence I was shocked that she had died of cancer at a very premature age. I have since read many accounts of her career and many tributes. I have no competence to add to them. I merely want to say that I am very moved by her death, more than for most deaths of persons not my friends or relatives. She was not only an outstanding journalist, but she was clearly an outstanding person. You had to be pretty remarkable to convey that while retailing the news five nights a week. I will certainly miss her.

The Puzzle of Dual Highways   

I love living in Mexico City, but of course I don’t love everything about it. I’ve complained before about the sidewalks. They are mostly a mess and clearly contemptuous of mere pedestrians, not to mention of elderly walkers or handicapped ones. I’ve now discovered another oddity, though I don’t know who profits from the city’s crazy policy.

  Throughout the city and well beyond it are newish modern highways that cut through the local traffic. They are without lights while you are between entrances and exits. A real boon.

   But even these modern throughways get traffic-logged, with progress much slowed down. What to do to improve the flow?

   The answer is easy, but not adopted. Parallel to most of those throughways—parallel above them, surely built at greater expense than those on ground level, are roads that take people to the same places as do the lower ones. In principle, a good idea to relieve ground-level traffic. In practice, it doesn’t work that way.

   When I asked why people preferred staying in the traffic below, the answer was very simple. “It costs too much to pay the fees of the upper road, even considering the savings on gas in the smoother flow above.

   To me, that makes no sense at all. Clearly the pricing of access to the basically unused upper road is way off. It’s obviously not even a trade-off or the traffic on the two roads would be more or less evenly divided. I don’t know what would change that situation nor am I optimistic that there will be a change at all. Given Mexico City’s reputation, one surmises that somebody benefits. But I can’t figure out who that might be.