<< Back 7/3/02 Bigger does not always mean better By JoAnna Swanson Recently, the Ashville Citizen-Times has printed articles discussing the Department of Transportation’s widening of I-240 to eight lanes. For some odd reason, the project seems to have been approved. Apparently, there were no vociferous objections. (Where are the environmental activists when you could really use them!?) More important than this one project is the entire (mis) conception, rampant in modern American culture, that “big” is synonomous with “good.” Why do we think that way? Let’s take a look at what “big” does, using the Route 240 widening project as a prototype example. ° Numero uno is the myth that by widening roads traffic problems are alleviated. Nowhere has this been true. In actuality, widening roads encourages more traffic to use them! (This includes large trucks). Check the statistics of cities in the USA and you will find that traffic increased greatly when roads were widened. ° More traffic means more gases in the air and more pollution. Not so wonderful! Western North Carolina, for one, already is rated as having one of the worst air pollution problems in the country. ° More air pollution leads to more sickness. Asthmatics will have a more difficult time breathing; young children and the elderly will be more prone to respiratory difficulties; anyone at all with an impaired immune system will run the risk of developing serious illness, including emphysema and lung cancers. ° More traffic also means more chance of accidents simply because there will be more vehicles on the road. More vehicles on the road increases the percentage of “impaired” drivers, be the impairment alcohol, drugs or sleepiness. And how about the infamous “road rage” effect? Will more traffic mean more angry people driving? ° Widening roads means reducing green space — more cement and fewer trees, bushes, grass and flowers. What kind of trade-off is this in a country already suffering from loss of environment, animal habitats and excess heat from the greenhouse effect? The same bogeys inserting their ugly faces in the road-widening undertaking come to haunt us when we try to “grow” our towns thoughtlessly. Developers replace green mountains with flattened plateaus of housing developments (If you don’t believe that happens, take a look at the terrain around San Francisco!). More animals lose their habitats and become endangered. A larger population also, regrettably, means more, and serious, crime. I grew up in Miami, Fla., and saw this happen. Back several decades, children could play in the meadow across the street (yes, meadow). In the 50s and 60s, teens rode buses at night, coming home late without unpleasant incidents and without fear of being attacked. Try that now! Crime is rampant. If that’s not enough of a bogey, more buildings, more streets and more sidewalks mean more trapped air, more heat and more pollution. Referring again to my experiences in Florida, as a child I remember feeling refreshed all summer by wonderful, cooling sea breezes. Florida was not the summer oven it is now. Once the rows of tall condos (we referred to them as the “concrete canyon”) were built along the beaches, sea breezes were blocked and South Florida became a greenhouse! That, in turn, causes more sickness — physical, mental and emotional. Then, of course, we return full scale to more traffic, since it stands to reason that a larger population will be driving more cars. And so it goes ... Does all this sound horrible? Does it make you cringe as it does me? What shall we do to avoid this nightmare? We’d love to hear from all you Smoky Mountain News readers. Mail in your solutions and let’s try to head off the unpleasant phantoms rapidly traveling toward our “neck of the woods!” (JoAnna Swanson lives in Waynesville.)