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Priorities are supposed to be the things that keep people "in-line" with reality. Lately I have noticed that the priorities of many people are in the wrong way of thinking. An example of what I am talking about is something that I had read in a newspaper the other day. The article said that the Highway 101 in Nova Scotia (Canada) is more important than building a sewage plant in Halifax, Nova Scotia (Canada). Now at first sight I thought that a highway that has many deaths on it in a given year sounded like it was more important than making a sewage plant for a harbor.
I did some research on the Highway 101 and found out that it wasn't just that simple a solution to overlook the sewage plant. There are many areas that have cleaned up different waters by creating a sewage plant, and I understand that there is always the wildlife that lives in the waters that are dying the most when nothing is being done about the pollution (may it be raw sewage or something else). After doing some research dealing with that Highway 101 thing, I found out that it isn't as big a problem that many are making it out to be.
The Highway 101 has claimed many lives in the past few years and something must be done about it, I agree with that fully, however what is being left out is why I don't agree that the Highway 101 needs the work more than a sewage plant. The plan that is being applied is to "twin" the existing highway in the areas that have had many of the deaths. The problem is the simple fact that most of the deaths were from people driving above the speed limit and losing control. There are some of the accidents/deaths that were the result of someone falling asleep behind the wheel and having a "head on collision" due to this. Having the Highway 101 "twined", in my opinion, will not decrease the accidents/deaths as much as people have said that it will. I feel that the accidents will actually increase on that highway due to it being "twined". People are already driving too fast on the highway now, having it "twined" will have them driving the highway even faster. This will especially happen for those that are between the ages of 16 to 35. That is a large age bracket.
If the plan to "twin" the Highway 101 goes through, I can honestly say that I have great pity for anyone that gets into an accident due to the person in front/back was going to fast and lost control. The police for that highway have made great strides to decrease the "speeders", however having that highway "twined" will cause more problems for the police to control without putting radars all over that highway. To make a highway "twined" due to only one side of an equation is not right. Unless everyone in that part of Nova Scotia don't care about the loss of lives that will come from the "twinning" of that highway, the fight about that highway and a sewage plant (to actually do some good) shouldn't be that hard to figure out.
It is bad enough, as I found out through my research, that the Highway 103 that goes from Halifax to Yarmouth (through the South Shore) had some work done on it and the work stopped all of a sudden because they ran out of money. Who says that the same thing won't happen to the Highway 101 if they start the work and decide that they are done all that they can do. It is ridiculous to start something like a "bypass" for a highway and stop all of a sudden, now as I understand they are planning to finish the work for the Highway 103 some time soon however they have to take out the "over-growth" from what was already done because they left it for too long to allow the grass (etc.) to grow without the pavement put in. Stuff like this happens because the politics change, so whoever had control at one time starts to lose out on something, so he/she has the project to stop until they feel it is necessary to continue. If there are any politicians that are out there that actually have half a brain, before the time for elections to start up again, it would be amazing. Any time when something this big comes into the works is only when the politicians feel that it is time to "buy" more votes. The common sense thing to do is to have the project going all throughout the time that the politician is in control. There will be more to gain if the politicians realize this, however I guess having brains is not a requirement for being a politician.
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