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Madison Mayor Satya Roads-Carway announced the city's plan to begin construction on all Madison roads perpetually in order to add even more bike lanes at a press conference yesterday afternoon.
“I love the smell of freshly poured asphalt in the morning. Smells like, smells like victory." Roads-Carway said at a construction site while wearing a U.S. Cavalry-style Stetson hat.
The plan will cost approximately $947,510,038 and continue perpetually until the end of time, or the destruction of Earth in an estimated 7.5 billion years.
During that time, every road in Madison will be placed under construction to be made more “pedestrian friendly” by adding 20 new bike lanes to every road, reducing Regent Street to a controversial “two-way, one-lane” traffic flow and making all parking lots downtown cost $60 an hour even though no one will be able to drive to them because all the roads will be under construction until the end of time.
The construction project may have a large impact on students. While cars will become obsolete, saving car owning students some money, the cost of bikes, bike parts and bike maintenance are expected to skyrocket. Also, without roads, how will students be able to mindlessly walk into the middle of traffic while mindlessly scrolling on Tik-Tok or drive their stupid little 15 mph stand-up scooters alongside 50 mph traffic?
The idea was originally thought up by the Madison Common Council as a way to frivolously spend your hard earned paychecks on something experts call, “dumb.”
“As the city of Madison becomes more and more expensive for its residents, and the university in my district becomes out of reach for many because of its rising costs, we’ve concocted just the fix. Ignore it and faff all the tax money away on endless construction projects!” District 8 Alder MGR Govindarajan told The Beet.
Govindarajan has been accused of taking donations from the controversial Bike-Madison Public Affairs Committee (BMPAC), so much so, some experts have claimed his association with the group is the leading reason his approval ratings plummeted this past year, and he chose not to seek reelection this April.
District 2 Alder Will Billedmor-Biklans is also supportive of the bill. His policy platform is getting rid of all parking places downtown and replacing them with bike lanes.
“The fact that we spent $10,000 in taxes on a bike lane a block and a half away isn't a good reason to not spend $10,000 in taxes on a bike lane here,” Billedmor-Biklans said. “It's a better reason.”
While some have called the local government out of touch for ignoring the affordability crisis and the awful downtown traffic caused by confusing car lanes and a lack of parking, polling done by the Beet shows 95% of construction contractors support the decision.
However, because of a Flock surveillance tower, construction on roads near campus may be halted. The surveillance tower, designed to bring about the futuristic world of George Orwell’s “1984,” is legally on city property and must be torn down for the city to go through with its construction plans. But because it’s near a university building, UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin argues it should stay up.
“How else are we supposed to sift and winnow this hallowed institution into a surveillance state if not for the surveillance towers?” said Mnookin, who has issued statements saying she’ll chain herself to the tower if the construction plans go through.
Dominic Violante is The Beet editor for The Daily Cardinal.
