I led a mass act of civil disobedience last night. About a dozen other Lincolnites and I all broke the law together. It was great.
Highway 2 is being resurfaced, and portions of the road are closed from 6:00PM to 6:00AM. That's all fine and dandy. But as is typical of Lincoln's transportation planners, nobody bothers to change the timing of the traffic lights. The result? A backlog of vehicles on 27th Street at Highway 2 waiting for ... nobody. 27th Street traffic received 20 seconds of green light (I timed it), then sat around for 60 seconds while nobody traveled on Highway 2. After waiting through a few frustrating light cycles, I found myself at the front of the line waiting at a red light. Next to me was a large pickup. We apparently had the same idea at the same time, because we hit the gas simultaneously.
What I saw next in my rear-view mirror was beautiful: car after car streamed through the intersection. It was civil disobedience at its finest. And amazingly, not a single vehicle was damaged by the non-oncoming non-traffic. Eventually two goody-goodies made their way to the front of the line and waited patiently at the red light. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.
Seriously, though, what's the deal with leaving the traffic lights on their normal pattern? That just breeds disgust for road work, road workers, and transportation planning in general, and there's already plenty of that going on in Lincoln. Assuming that construction vehicles may have needed to cross the intersection occasionally, a four-way stop (flashing red all four directions) would have made the most sense.
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Nextt thing you know you’ll be carrying a firearm to a city Council meeting.
No wait that is not civil disobedience, that is legal, oops sorry my bad.
Great on yuh though.
Subvert the dominant paradigm!
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