Congratulations to Harwich on defeating the initiative to “improve” Route 124.
A predictable reaction to the decision in a letter to this paper complained that the existing road is scandalously old, dating back to the 1920s. Sometimes we carelessly use “older” as a metaphor for incompetent, as if newer always means better. But the argument not to renovate the road was not, as I understand it, an argument that the existing road is better simply because it is older and not even that it is not really broke (so don’t fix it), but that it is superior to the straightened and widened version that would have replaced it.
Sometimes charm and human scale trump efficiency and speed.
Years ago, a Wellfleet selectman wanted to double barrel Route Six not only to the Orleans/Eastham rotary but all the way to the tip. He saw it as the only sensible, grownup thing to do: forget the romance of the old roads, full speed ahead. A wider road would be a safer, faster road, even if it would have meant paving over a good portion of this narrow land. Not many out this way agreed with him.
In our town a lot of the old sand roads have been left unpaved not because we can’t afford to pave them but because the people living on these roads actually prefer them to the paved version. They have the virtues of their defects. We like the aesthetic of approaching our homes on a sinuous, soft (even if, at times, pothole-ridden) road through the woods. Sand roads keep speeds down in the neighborhood, providing more opportunity for smelling the roses, as it were. Sand roads are narrower; there is less impact on the countryside. A sand road feels protective.
Nostalgia for the old days? Sure, some of that, but that plus other quality of life considerations make it work for us in the present.
If the argument is that the existing 124 is dangerous, that could be cured by lowering the speed limit.
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