Dear Crummy Civil Engineers

Dear Crummy Civil Engineers by crummyjoel

Tuesday, 24 July 2007, 8:03am
Filed under: crummy letters

Dear Civil Engineers of the City in Which I Reside;

I swear to you that if another traffic light goes up on the road between my house and the interstate, I am going to absolutely lose my &*%(*&. Seriously, it’s like a 3-mile stretch of road. There are 11 stoplights I have to cross. There are less than 30,000 people in our paltry little town. Is it all really necessary?

It would be one thing if they were regular old stoplights. You know, the old fashioned kind where if someone on a side street pulled up to the light they would have to sit there waiting on the light to change, often for minutes at a time with absolutely no oncoming traffic in sight. Ah, the good old days.

But no. That’s not the case here. Every single one of these eleven stoplights can sense traffic and has the trigger finger of Jules and Vincent. If a car on a side street even thinks about pulling up to the stop light, the main artery immediately gets a yellow light.

Now, during a typical rush hour, do you have any idea how many times I have to stop at a light over this three mile course? I’ll give you a second to do the math….eleven stop lights….eleven stop lights with traffic sensors….eleven stoplights with trigger fingers……

Yep, you guessed it…..FIFTEEN. Why fifteen? Because so much traffic backs up because of the lousy system you have installed, that by the time I get anywhere near a green light at a major intersection it’s back to yellow again!!

Look, yours is a difficult job. Not everyone can just waltz into college and become a civil engineer. I get that. But just take 10 minutes one morning rush hour and observe how traffic flows on the main road. And by “flows” I of course mean “grinds to a complete halt”. It is absolutely a shame upon your fine profession.

It is a shame because the term “engineering” implies that some sort of mathematical or scientific thinking occurred, when it is apparent that all that happened in our town is that 11 sets of traffic-sensing stoplights were purchased and installed. That’s not engineering. That’s “shopping”. You don’t want to be called “Civil Shoppers”, do you? Then start engineering something.

Change the stop lights on the cross-roads back to the old fashioned kind and set up some sort of timing system. One that allows cars on the main artery to approach some sort of normal driving speeds. We thank you in advance.

CrummyJoel

PS: Humor-blogs.com wonders if they could get their hands on one of those cool engineer hats? Thanks.

PPS: OK, seriously folks I am running out of Crummy Letter inspiration. Ideas in the form of comments to this post will be greatly appreciated.

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