Tunnel Vision

Just the other day, I was on a bus coming home from a dinner with friends and the bus took a new route. I was rather surprised that this new route was in operation so soon. This new route runs closest to one of our museums, where our beloved Central Library use to stand. This was the first library in established in our country, so not only do I remember it, my folks remember it clearly too.

What did they do to this library? Well, let me just digress a little here. Remember the movie or novel The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. Well, the aliens called Vogons approached the Earth and announced that Earth was in their way of building one of their inter-galactic hyperspace bypass and had to be destroyed to make way for it. Well, that's exactly what happened to our library, not on such a grand scale, but yes, the library was destroyed to make way for a 500 metre (only 500 metres!!) tunnel through the hill behind it, so that it will ease traffic congestion in that area.

There were heaps of protest in the forum section the newspaper that the library belongs to our culture and heritage and destroying it will be like destroying part of our culture and heritage. Well, the government probably said, to hell with culture and heritage, bye bye library. BUT, a few streets away, they decided to 'relocate' the library to a gi-normously (think too big) redundant seven storey glass building. To me, it was like trying to appease the public outcry to stop the demolition of the library. So, to make things short for all the young children reading this blog out there: Destroying a culture and heritage building is okay, so long as it's relocated to a bigger building and everyone's happy. Can anyone see what's wrong here?

I've travelled to many parts of the world, but Europe has impressed me with the large number of age-old buildings and castles that have survived the test of time, some buildings over hundreds of years while really old ones, over thousands of years! (think Roman Empire at least!) My friends in Vienna can point out to me and tell me that so and so building standing there was actually a Palais or palace of one of their princes over 100 years ago. Bridges and buildings have withstood the test of time, war and weather to be left in place and remembered, not only for their beauty or what they stood for, but also for their testament to good architecture that allowed the building to stand for so long. In other words, there's a history behind everything that's worth saving and worth remembering forever. Fathers can tell their sons what the building stood for and in turn, their sons can tell their son's son, and so on. But over here, I think my dad can only tell me and bring me to that library when I was young, I don't think I can tell my son what was there anymore, it's gone.

Well, no matter how pissed off I got at what they did, what's done is done, there's no point looking back and saying that used to be the library, but it's a tunnel now. However, as the bus I was taking went around the new route, around the outside of the tunnel, I saw where the tunnel came out and I was laughing so hard I was in stitches and almost pee-ed in my pants a little.

There, at the end of the tunnel was a huge traffic congestion, why, because vehicles exiting the tunnel were merging with traffic that circumvented the tunnel (traffic coming from another direction that couldn't use this new tunnel) and all the buses and cars were trying to get from the extreme right lane to the extreme left lane and vice versa, causing another huge build-up of traffic.

Did the tunnel solve the traffic congestion problem, yes, for less than 500 metres. After that, it was back to square one. An expensive solution that probably didn't work, but the government will say it's a success and that the tax payer's money were justified. Translation: It probably was a stupid idea to begin with, but the Central Library is gone and we can't rebuild it, however, heads will roll.

The new solution? Well, maybe they should dig a new tunnel underground (into hell), perhaps then, everything will be solved!