On GE January 16, 1999, Paul visited with Carl Piercey, former Dean of the Parking Administration at the University of Newfoundland at St. John's, and now city traffic czar, to see his brainchild, the Millenium On-ramp--a seven story double-helix rising out of the Osbourne Memorial Drive. Complete audio of the interview:
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 The Millenium On-ramp. Click for larger version.
Mr. Piercey: "My early research was on the Anglo-German debate between expressism and arterialism. More recently I was working toward a unified theory of traffic....it's a post-junctionist poetics really. I understand traffic as a living system, a higher form of life in which all elements of the body have intersecting functions. The motorist is the raw material, consumed in the maintenance of the circulation and growth." "Think of the road system ," says Mr. Piercey, "as a body with multiple sphincters. Traffic regularity is all about properly positioned streetlights, opening and closing junctions at the proper rate. This city is dangerously close to the chronic constipation of gridlock.... I propose to turn this great on-ramp into a sub-adjunct arterial valve feeding a circular raised highway that will encompass the entire city...a giant multilayered roundabout above the city on which you can get anywhere from anywhere."
PM: "But where does it lead exactly?" |
