This first got under my skin almost two weeks ago, but I set it aside, having other things to write about. But now that I’m really ticked off, it’s time to say something.

I have a bone to pick with Mr. Andres Duany, famous architect and urban philosopher extraordinaire.

I get allergy shots — one in each arm — every two weeks. It’s a hassle, as between driving there from my office, waiting for the shots, waiting to make sure there’s no reaction afterward (there never is, but it’s a rule) and driving back to the office, it takes at least an hour out of my work day (like most service providers, the doctor’s office isn’t open for shots either before or after my work day).

On Wednesday, May 18, I was running really late for my shots. It was hot. There were two things wrong with my truck — the air conditioning wasn’t working, and the fuel pressure was seriously fouled up, causing it to give off clouds of noxious exhaust generated by inefficiently-burned gasoline. So I had to have the windows open, and every time I stopped at a traffic light I would gag and choke on the fumes that filled the cab until I started moving again.

And the traffic on Bull Street was standing still from about Taylor Street to the start of 277. Move a few feet, then stand still for half a minute and cough and gag and wheeze, move a few feet, cough and gag and wheeze, for a period of time that seemed like it would never end. But I eventually made it to the doctor’s office, and then put the incident out of my mind — except for resolving to take the truck in to let my mechanic take yet another crack at it (this time successfully).

Then, the very next morning, I read in my newspaper that Mr. Duany, the fancy-schmancy thinker of deep thoughts working on a plan for the State Hospital property, wants to expand his brief to alter the surrounding area — as if the Mental Health Department site were not enough to work with. He wants to “calm” the traffic on Elmwood Avenue, Harden Street, Colonial Drive and Bull Street with, the story said, “on-street parking, plantings, narrower lanes and lower speed limits.”

Quoth the urban planning guru (in a statement with cadences that, not having met Mr. Duany, I hear in my head as spoken with the voice of Marvin the Martian):

You have very wide streets here and, for some weird reason, you are proud of them…. They are very speedy and unpleasant streets.

He should try driving on them from 5 to 5:30 p.m. on a stifling Wednesday in a rolling gas chamber. Unpleasant, yes, but speedy? It was a parking lot!

How, pray tell, does Mr. Duany recommend that we get from, say, the USC campus and points south to Palmetto Richland hospital? Basically, there are two paths to choose from — Bull and Harden. If you make those any “calmer” you will lock up the city, trapping thousands who commute from downtown to their homes in the exploding Northeast via 277. (At least, I assume that’s where they’re going. They could be going to Charlotte for all I know.)

What does he propose to do with all that traffic, if he basically eliminates those routes as arteries (just barely) capable of handling that volume? (When I raised this question at the time, some of my colleagues facetiously suggested going all the way around town on 77 — which is about the only alternative that would handle the volume of traffic we’re talking about).

Now, I’m all for Town and Country and yuppies getting to walk from their condos to work and to the corner store. “Livability” is a great thing for those who can afford it. But that doesn’t help the rest of us get from point A to point B in X amount of time — which modern life insists that we do, whether we want to or not. (And I, for one, don’t want to — at least not this way. But until someone waves a wand and creates a true mass transit system for our area, I’m stuck with this way.)

So what set me off on this subject at last? Why go all Denis Leary now, rather than two weeks ago? Because I went to get my shots again today, and the traffic on Bull was so “calm” that I for the first time ever, I got there too late. Or at least the nurse said it was too late. My cell phone, which runs (like most cell phones, I suspect) to the second in synchronization with the U.S. Naval Observatory, told me I was just barely on time. (On another day I’ll address the issue of why there’s no reason in the world we can’t all be on the same time standard, instead of people in offices and stores closing early because their clock says it’s time.) But I didn’t argue, at least not much. I didn’t trust myself to say what I was thinking, because I was far too “calm” after fighting the traffic on Bull Street. The nurse was doing her job, and she didn’t deserve to receive the brunt of that. It wasn’t her I was mad at, anyway.

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