Agnostic Roads
Oct. 6, 2025, 2:54 p.m.
The roadways are a shared resource payed for by the taxpayer (hrm hrm)! Currently, I understand there are some entities who pay minimally for the roads while benefiting the most, while there are others who pay the most for the shared resources and benefit minimally. “Unga Bunga!You pay taxes you use road, you don’t pay taxes you don’t use road” of course there are nuances. The gist being if you paid your fair share then you should benefit and if not you shouldn’t benefit from what you didn’t pay for.
But here’s another issue I perceive, roads are a shared resource, but vehicles currently act as if they own the road. But they don’t own the road it’s the person inside who does, along with the many others. If a car owns the road then that’s more akin to the brand of car owning the road. Further, following this logic do the tires own the road? or does the motor own the road? heck if it’s this topsy-turvy why not make the stereo own the road? But that’s not the case. I pay for it therefore I own it; I believe this should be your thought regarding roads and who pays for them.
With that being said since I own the road shouldn’t I get to use my own vehicle of choice at my desired speed? I understand there are other considerations like emissions or safety. In the case of emissions shouldn’t lower emission vehicles have priority? In the case of safety, wouldn’t safety apply universally regardless of country/state/municipality, etc?, yet there’s the Autobahn known to be fast and safe. There’s more to unpack here and in order to make my writing more verifiable, scholarly and generally fit would require a tremendous amount of research, time and effort. As you may know, I may be able to manage those, however, the time scales involved seem rather long and of no immediate benefit. That being said it doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to see those improvements but rather I’m not at a capacity to make anything meaningful, so therefore, my efforts would be better suited for other purposes.
So why write anything then? I’d argue for other reasons primarily top of search engine listing or colloquially known as marketing, I have found writing for myself to be quite meditative, and finally in the case that someone with a more meaningful capacity than me ends up reading this,I can only hope it sparks a conversation or a new train of thought that produces further benefits for society.
How I perceive the current status of the situation. Roads are used as a resource that large commercial vehicles benefit while minimally maintaining them and being obstructions for the taxpayer. Let’s explore this argument in a different light. What if instead the bicyclist the least damaging form of transportation was not viewed as an obstruction but rather the large commercial vehicles were the ones viewed as the obstruction. Would that then cause remarks that these large vehicles are too pollutant and unsafe? I’d argue, yes. The are big, pollutant, capable of producing great harm, damage the roads, etc. Following this logic they would have to be treated like the current culture of disgust towards bikes, but rather aimed towards these commercial vehicles.
Would then the large obstructions be required to be isolated to their own out of the way byways while the roads are then meant for walk-ability, biking and maybe other kooky contraptions? It currently feels like there is an imbalance where commerce is currently what dominates, this feels especially evident in the roads and even percolates onto the culture where the bicyclist and even pedestrian get remarks as if they are an inconvenience. With that being said I would like to flip that culture on it’s head and flip the script the pedestrian and bicyclist is not an inconvenience but rather the commercial vehicles are the inconvenience impeding traffic, destroying our tax payed roads, polluting, essentially being a drain, yes they provide a service but not necessarily by merit but by sway and heft in the commerce which affects everyone’s business, paycheck, commute times, tax payments, heck even culture.
Further, if you replaced an entity and by replacing this entity it can cause a halt in benefits socially, financially or otherwise that means that entity can be exploited. This entity is probably already being exploited, heck I’d be more surprised if it’s NOT currently being exploited. By allowing one entity to handle important infrastructure that’s a weakness known as a single point of failure look out for those, they’re everywhere if that one person, resource, infrastructure, etc. exists only one of; then that is a perfect candidate for exploitation and can cause havoc downstream of whatever relies on that singular entity.
So I propose adopting an agnostic stance towards what seems like quite literally everything.For the purposes of this paper, applying this agnostic stance towards roads. By being agnostic and cognizant of the fragility of the road as an infrastructure, as a resource for everyone,I’d argue wonderful things start happening like lower commute times, more pleasant drivers, more walkable cities, lower grocery costs, lower gas costs, the list goes on.