I’ve lived in the Huntsville area since 1986. To say I’ve seen significant growth would be an understatement. As I type, we’re knocking on half a million people in the metro area.
Clearly, there are some associated positives. What a tremendous job market we have, with desirable growth and diversification. It’s a much hipper and more cosmopolitan area in which to eat, drink, and be merry than it was even five years ago. When nascent luminaries like Alex Hendrix want to stay here and evangelize for the community instead of pack up for Nashville or Atlanta at the first opportunity, you know there’s something afoot. When I’ve got an ever-growing selection of Thai, Vietnamese, and Japanese restaurants from which to choose, and even options like Persian and Ukrainian are popping up, then Huntsville is developing some significant restaurant chops.
Alas, there are negatives too. It’s awfully peopley out there, to quote an oft-circulated meme. Funny thing—I remember complaints about traffic 30 years ago in hsv.general, and mostly they were ridiculous. Mostly they are still ridiculous. You can get from a given point in the Huntsville area to any other point in the Huntsville area in under an hour even during commuting time, and that number shrinks nearly by half during non-peak hours. That is not the narrative of a city in which it is difficult to get around. The occasional frustrations we feel are relative and minor.
You know what I realized yesterday, though, driving into downtown during evening drive time to help a friend with a computer problem? Desirable alternate routes are just about gone. I don’t mean “shortcuts.” I mean ways you could go that weren’t the shortest distance but that might have taken the same time, only moving; or that you might even tease a few seconds to the good from. They’ve essentially dried up, if my experience is typical (and I believe it is). These are the best relief valves we’ve had, and today there is just as much flow through them as on the main drags.
There are several road construction projects intended to mitigate the problem, but they’re nowhere close to enough. Remember how great we all thought the County Line Rd. exit on 565 West would be? How’s that worked out? Hasn’t exactly made the Wall Triana exit a ghost town, has it? Was it better for even a month?
One day, quite soon, full-throated complaints about Huntsville traffic will ring genuinely. May the blessings of telework I am currently enjoying flow until my retirement.
(But I’ll take flex start and end, too.)
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