Time to Build God a New Highway

Contrary to the popular perception, we are not building more and more highways in this country. The actual number of highway miles has been steadily shrinking. But we are straightening out the kinks in existing highways and making them wider. Precisely the prophetic advice in today's text.

There isn't a person here who hasn't been stuck in gridlock at some point and wished we had more roads to ease the traffic congestion.

News flash! More roads isn't going to do it. Traffic engineers know that the moment you build a bigger road, more traffic rushes into it creating a monster mess in contrast to the previous mini-mess.

According to Parkinson's Law, work expands to fill the time available for its completion. Similarly, data expands to fill the space available, as anyone who has tried running Windows '98 on a 5-year-old computer can attest. Another variation - expenditures rise to meet income, which is probably how your last raise seemed to disappear. Applying this sinister logic to our highways, the number of vehicles expands to fill any highway.

In fact, we are NOT building more roads. The miles of paved highway in the U.S. numbered highway system, those roads exclusive of the Interstate system that stretch through two or more states, have actually been declining --...