"The misconception people have about driving in New Jersey is that we Jersey drivers think we are driving. In fact, we are swarming. Freeways are nice, but if you have to redirect down a puddled two-lane road between tall reeds that’s fine, too. Anyplace where you can drive is acceptable, basically. And you have to be able to switch quickly from driving-swarming to merely sitting, when you find yourself in a traffic jam...
Most of the driving in and around New York takes you under things, through various limbos where dimness surrounds you amid artificial illumination and red tail-lights reflected off shiny surfaces. When you’re enclosed like that, the sounds of other engines get louder, the bass notes of the music in the cars next to you beat like hearts, and your own car’s untreated brake problems echo nerve-rackingly off the nearest wall. The highway subterrains have a Stygian quality—as in the so-called (by me) Forest of Columns that brings traffic onto and off the G.W.B. on the Manhattan side. It’s always twilight in the Forest of Columns...
once the idea that the traffic jams might be trying to drive us crazy on purpose entered the public consciousness, the system was in trouble. A free-for-all mentality took over and any sense of common interest vanished. Billboards that advertise huge S.U.V.s motoring like tanks over potholed roads implied that each of us should be fighting the transit demon individually—Hey, get your own S.U.V.! Get your own highway! It didn’t help that Christie had vetoed the building of a new railroad tunnel under the Hudson leading to Manhattan. Today, if you are quiet on a delayed New Jersey Transit train waiting to get into the existing tunnel, and you listen to the ambient conversation noise among the passengers, you will hear “Christie!” muttered over and over."
This was just lovely and beautiful despite the obviously false premise. Like, it convinced me thst HE likes driving in NYC, but not that I would ever come to truly appreciate it.
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