“Express”

I’d like to meet the folks in the New York-New Jersey area whose job is to manage the highways and, better yet, allocate road names throughout the region.

See, while I can’t necessarily blame these people for the insane amount of traffic that commuters experience on a daily basis, I can point out one very obvious flaw in their collective line of thinking: these people obviously have little understanding of what the word “express” really means.

Let’s take my favorite example, the Staten Island Expressway – or, as I like to call it, the Staten Island Lack Thereof. Now I realize that aptly naming it the Staten Island Dump-side Parking Lot is unrealistic (and morale-zapping at that), but calling that overpriced, perpetually crowded piece of crap road an “Expressway” is not only grossly inaccurate, it’s actually a slap in the face to the thousands of poor souls who are forced to take the SILT on a regular daily basis. I’ll bet the folks on the naming committee would reconsider if they, too, had no other choice but to sit in traffic for hours on end and then pay eleven freaking dollars for the privilege of passing through Staten Island at a pace that could only be described as the complete opposite of “express.” Seriously, why don’t they just add a little area at the foot of the bridge where people can get out of their cars, bend over, and get the eleven dollars bitch-spanked out of them by dominatrix toll booth operators looking for a little fun? Express, my ass. The Staten Island Overpricedway sounds a heck of a lot more accurate.

Then there are roads like the Garden State Parkway that come with their very own set of “express” lanes. Sorry, but unless “express” means jam-packed full of cars so that you’re going about one-twentieth of a mile per hour, I think those lanes were, like the SILT, very poorly named. The only thing the “express” side of the GSP really offers is the ability to zone out for longer periods of time while you’re sitting in bumper to bumper traffic without the distraction of those pesky “exit [whatever]” signs coming up on your right at every mile. Instead of “local” versus “express,” call those lanes what they really are: “slow” versus “slower.”

Seriously, do these people not understand what the word “express” really means? Or are they just so miserable in their jobs that they choose to throw the word around as a mocking contrast to the reality that is pretty much any road in the tri-state area? Maybe I’ll ponder that one the next time I’m stuck in traffic…