XI. From Barton Springs to Stubb’s
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There is a natural law concerning traffic which states that as you expand roads to alleviate congestion, traffic will grow to refill them. Homes will fill the land now serviced, people will fill those homes, those people will fill those roads. I think of this sometimes, covering the 36 miles between Creedmoor and Round Rock in 26 minutes. Passing just about nothing.
Mopac, they say, used to have stoplights, which means Mopac, they used to say, used to not even have any stoplights, which means that one day I will tell of how when I moved here, you got from the airport to East 7th by a janky little bridge which looked like something somebody had forgotten to close.
We know not what will happen to the land, save that it will be filled, one way or another, with homes, and that those homes will fill with people, and that those people will fill these roads. Until these roads grow again, wider and longer, until Austin and San Antonio collide and San Marcos, like some forgotten continent buried by tectonic shift, disintegrates into that old ancient fault line which runs along I-35.
Natural laws are natural laws. Are we not animals?
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