kitchen table math, the sequel: treemageddon, part 2

Thursday, March 18, 2010

treemageddon, part 2



This is our road, which everyone calls "the bumpy road." We live on the left-hand side; the people on the right still don't have power 5 days after the storm. If you click on the photo you can see the scene in all its glory.

5 comments:

LexAequitas said...

Are you in North Jersey, by chance? I live in Bergen and it seems much the same. School was out until today.

palisadesk said...

There's a road there? Surely you jest. Looks more like Outward Bound territory.

Catherine Johnson said...

I'm in Irvington - just across the Tappan Zee bridge.

Greenwich is apparently a mess; they're going to be out all week.

Our schools were closed for one day.

Catherine Johnson said...

palisadesk:

THANK YOU

EXACTLY

That is not a road

It is an Outward Bound journey

The road is private - so private we don't even know who owns it. In fact, we're trying to refinance & everything was finished until yesterday (by happenstance) when the bank decided it wants to know who owns the road.

Ed spent some of this year trying to convince the mayor to maintain the road, but no dice.

Irvington is filled with roads like this -- well, not roads at the level of Outward Bound journeys, but private roads the village doesn't maintain.

When I was reading White Man's Burden, about the failure of foreign aid in Africa, one of the most vivid passages was about the state of roads there: they are exactly like this one. Easterley has graphic stories of men trying to get wives in labor to hospitals traveling on "bumpy roads." The maximum speed you can drive on our bumpy road is about 5mph & we often slow to 1mph to try to get over or around the deepest holes.

One of the major forms of aid these countries need is road MAINTENANCE.

Apparently, NGOs like to build stuff then leave it to the country to maintain. But a country that couldn't build the stuff in the first place also can't maintain it.

I gather we could do some kind of eminent domain and declare the road ours, along with the neighbor whose house is up the hill to the left.

LexAequitas said...

Not eminent domain, you mean adverse possession. It would only be eminent domain if you were part of the government.

To make the claim stronger, you could make some improvements to the road or other property, or start paying taxes on it. More permanent improvements are better for establishing a claim. And then you have to make sure no one makes a better claim for some set number of years (I think 20, iirc). And that the law doesn't change in that time.