Drill drill drill

From tonight’s BBC Lon­don Travel News page:

Restric­tion
A24 Lon­don — One lane closed on Clapham Com­mon South Side between the A205 Cav­endish Road junc­tion and the B237 Night­in­gale Lane junc­tion in Clapham … star­ted: 16th May 2005, end­ing: 30th August 2005

It’s not far off mid­night as I write this, yet almost dir­ectly out­side my win­dow, sev­eral shades of some­thing or other are being mer­ci­lessly smashed out of the road by a selec­tion of huge pneu­matic drills. There are lor­ries and JCBs all over the place. In fact, were it not for the small mercy of hav­ing five floors to sep­ar­ate me from the hive of activ­ity down below, I would be liv­ing in the middle of some of the most extens­ive road­works I’ve ever seen. And as I poin­ted out before, it’s nearly mid­night. If recent nights are any­thing to go by, this unholy racket will go on until at least 5.00am.

Now, I’m not liv­ing in dream­land. Yes, I know that roads need to dug up, repaired and resur­faced (although I’ve never quite under­stood why they need to be dug up when they have only just seem­ingly been filled in again). I know, too, that pipes need to be laid, and that a bewil­der­ing array of other major con­struc­tion pro­jects need to take place. But why (oh why, oh why) must they hap­pen when people are try­ing to sleep?

The answer, of course: cars. Sod­ding cars.

Dur­ing the day, when this neigh­bour­hood prob­ably loses at least four-fifths of its pop­u­la­tion to offices and busi­nesses across Lon­don, the road­works below remain silent. In fact, as the night comes to an end, all obvi­ous signs of con­struc­tion are tidied up and made as incon­spicu­ous as pos­sible, so that the roads can once again fill to burst­ing point with the usual queues of selfish, idi­otic mor­ons sit­ting one per­son to a car. After all, we can’t pos­sibly incon­veni­ence people behind the wheel by clos­ing the road dur­ing the day and mak­ing them take a diver­sion, can we? No, per­ish the thought that London’s drivers might have to go a little out of their way and pos­sibly find their jour­neys delayed.

Come night­fall, how­ever, and the artil­lery of heavy machinery is dragged out once again. Not so many cars on the road now, so we can close it and start pum­mel­ling the hell out of the tar­mac, can’t we?

The only prob­lem with this is that it fails to take into account one tiny but non­ethe­less vitally import­ant point: namely, that people live here, and they’re try­ing to get some sleep.

Sorry, I might have to shout, as the dig­gers have star­ted up again. I said (deep breath): “PEOPLE LIVE HERE, AND THEY’RE TRYING TO GET SOME SLEEP!” Bloody hell. Bloody, bloody hell.

I sup­pose I shouldn’t have expec­ted any­thing dif­fer­ent. I’ve come to real­ise over the years, as my loath­ing of cars has grown, that the motor vehicle seems to mat­ter much more than the per­son. Oh, I know that those in power bang on about cut­ting con­ges­tion, lower­ing traffic levels, increas­ing pub­lic trans­port, and try­ing to curb our love for any­thing with a steer­ing wheel, but when it comes down to stark choices — like car­ry­ing out road­works dur­ing the day even if it does slightly incon­veni­ence drivers, so that people in the imme­di­ate vicin­ity can actu­ally man­age to sleep dur­ing the hours of dark­ness — all those ideals go out of the win­dow quicker than you can say, “Mmm, nice gas-guzzling 4x4 you’ve got there”.

As I lay in bed last night, star­ing at the ceil­ing and won­der­ing whether try­ing to hum at the same pitch as the pneu­matic drills might help evap­or­ate the sound from my mind and let me drift off to sleep (it didn’t, need­less to say), I began think­ing about the other way in which we show a clear pref­er­ence to the motor vehicle at the expense of human beings. For some years, whenever I’ve walked through a grim ped­es­trian under­pass or crossed an ugly metal foot­bridge over a busy road, I’ve wondered why the cars zoom­ing by above or below me are being treated bet­ter and given greater con­sid­er­a­tion than I am. Why can’t the drivers be sent into the dark bowels of the earth whilst I remain in fresh air and daylight?

Of course, the reason is money: it’s far cheaper to build a hor­rible under­pass for people than it is to build a road tun­nel for vehicles. As Exhibit A, I offer you the con­fus­ing, piss-stinking alley­ways that sup­posedly — if you can work out which arrow is point­ing where — lead ped­es­tri­ans to all points around Marble Arch in Lon­don, whilst the cars, buses, lor­ries and end­less parade of tour­ist coaches trundle around the multi-lane roads above. That just feels wrong, some­how. It’s the drivers who should be going under­ground to stew in their own nox­ious fumes.

It’s not going to hap­pen though, is it? And in the mean­time, I’m stuck with the sound of the earth mov­ing out­side my win­dow (no, not in that way) as Bob the Builder and his mates dig for vic­tory. Earplugs it is, then.

Oh God, I’ve got another week of this.