Once again, people around the world are transfixed by an absurd new idea from the myopic overseers of Puget Sound transportation. This time it's a plan to build a bridge out of aircraft carriers -- a bridge for carrying automobiles, of course.
You fools! You unelevated fools!
In April of this year, Two-Thousand and Fifteen of our Common Era -- fifteen years too far into what should have been our promised Future -- State Rep. Jesse Young (R-Automobilist) proposed squandering $90,000 of the transportation budget to study the feasibility of shackling together Bremerton and Port Orchard with decommissioned carriers.
The above satellite photo mock-up shows the proposed "Military Tribute" bridge anchored in the north at the interchange of State Automobile Routes 3 and 304 and lolling lackadaisically south-by-southeast across the Sinclair Inlet to Ross Point to spew motorists onto SAR 166. To fully span the roughly 3700 ft. gap would require three US Navy supercarriers (some of the desired carriers can be seen in dock at the Naval Shipyard in the upper right), although Rep. Young prefers two and his proposal allows the incorporation of as few as one. Even in their boldest steps, Automobilists travel with timidity!
Many have already criticized the folly of such a plan: its economic questionability, the unavailability of the carriers, numerous structural and environmental issues. The most fundamental flaw, however, is its pointlessness; not only does it merely perpetuate the continued Malaise of Automobility, but there is already a road between those two places!
Tellingly, the illustration being passed around the media, both social and mainstream, by automobile apologists (see: Daily Mail, et al.) is deceptively cropped to hide the end of Sinclair Inlet, giving the impression that the bridge would allow access between two otherwise unreachable points, thus serving some purpose beyond base vanity. In fact, as my uncropped illustration clearly shows, this bridge would only shave off less than 4 miles from a commute between Bremerton and Port Orchard (the bypassed route is about 4.5 miles and the bridge would be about three-quarters of a mile, including the necessary ramps to reach the deck height).
In all the talk about the impracticality of the scheme, what hasn't been much discussed is the impact this looming car-carrier would have on the area. Rep. Young claims tourism from the bridge will boost the local economy, but there's no reason tourists couldn't be allowed to simply visit the carriers while docked, much as they already can the destroyer USS Turner Joy. Is the privilege of paying a toll to drive on them for less than a minute really that much of a tourism draw?
Regardless of what meager tourist dollars the bridge may raise for the cities it imposes upon, one thing is certain: The Aircraft Carrier Bridge would bring economic ruin to Gorst!
Gorst! Listless Gorst! Haphazardly (with an emphasis on hazard) formed from the confusing confluence of automobile routes, addled motorists jockeying for lanes as they careen railless around a high-speed u-turn past Gorst's few businesses that eke an existence by pandering to the Autocracy. A bridge that would bypass Gorst -- while bringing relief from the dangerous slew of automobiles -- would take away what little economic activity came from those drivers who misjudged the trajectory and escaped orbit into some auto dealership or crash-landed into a drive-thru bikini barista.
Like an addict who uses not for pleasure but to avoid the pain of withdrawal, how could Gorst go on without its bottleneck? But could this sad state of affairs actually be an opportunity for a New Beginning? Even Automobilists think something must change at Gorst, if only someone could cut the Gorstian knot of traffic.
I have an audacious plan to do just that, one that will uplift Gorst so that not only may it stand on its own, free of the Tyranny of the Tire, but be transformed into a Beacon of Civilization in a smog-enshrouded wilderness:
We must transform Gorst into the premier Regional Monorail Hub!
Our future, if we are brave enough to seize it!
The governmental troglodytes of Seattle and Olympia -- aided by the voters whose minds have been poisoned by their anti-monorail lies -- have shown themselves to have neither the intellectual nor moral vision to see our Monorail Destiny, instead content to fritter our fortunes and futures away on a boring machine to bore a tunnel for boring automobiles heading only to boredom.
Enough! It is long past time we bypass these impediments to our Monorailular Birthright, to take Monorail Destiny into our own hands, unfettered by those beholden to Big Auto.
Instead of boring into the ground, we should be soaring along a rail in the sky! Instead of cobbling together infrastructure from the decaying cast-offs of the Military-Industrial Complex, we should be smelting the past down to forge a new Future, one monorail beam at a time!
Let them have their bridge! Their folly will finally free Gorst for our purpose. If we must forcibly assault the Continent of Tomorrow, then let us establish the beachhead at Gorst!
Gorst is uniquely situated at the center of the Kitsap Peninsula -- officially and prophetically designated the Great Peninsula -- which itself is the dominating central feature of Puget Sound. Gorst can be the epicenter for a seismic wave of change in both Transportation and Consciousness, sending ripples of future-thought and future-going throughout the Sound and eventually the World!
#MonoccupyGorst
With a population under 600, the politics and culture of Gorst can be bent to Monorailism. It is incumbent on Monorail activists the world over to emigrate to Gorst, monoccupy it, teach its people the way of the One Rail so that we may concentrate and grow our base of power. Instead of trying, as we have been, to bring Elevationment to the people piecemeal, one far-flung city at a time, always fighting against an entrenched Car Culture, we need to fully monorailform one singular town and expand from there.
The Gorst Monorail System will start modestly: first connecting Bremerton to Port Orchard, then branching out to greater Kitsap. Monorail beams will spread out from Gorst like rays of hope, reaching to neighboring small towns: Poulsbo, Seabeck, Belfair, Home, Purdy -- we will build a Coalition of the Isolated, uniting them together in a new Fraternity of Transportation! Monorailism will spread.
New communities will form where the monorail goes, communities based around Monorail Culture and Monorail Values: integrity, steadfastness, elevationment, purposeful momentum. Entrepreneurs, titans of industry, creatives, thought leaders -- all those with the dynamism to make the Future present will flock to these new-found Monotopias, generating prosperity that will fund further expansion with only minor taxation.
Those cities that initially refuse to embrace Monorailism will in short order relent, as both jealousy for our monorailular lifestyle and the demands of their citizens, now awakened to the Monorail Truth, will spur them to allow local connection to the Gorst Monorail System, perhaps grudgingly at first, but eventually leading to a mononoiac revelation as they realize how wrong their monorail skepticism was. We will accept their apologies with monorail-like grace and welcome them as brothers.
Eventually our rails will penetrate into those benighted autopolises where the monorail was repeatedly, cruelly rejected. Our monorail forces, backed by the will and yearning of the people, will overtake Olympia from behind, rousting that seat of power and ushering in a new, monorail-friendly regime; we will swoop through Tacoma with ease, ending its dalliances with so-called "light rail" and showing it the True Light of Monorail; and finally our Monorail Captains will lead a charge to pierce straight into the heart of Seattle, welcomed as Liberators, at last uniting its lonely monorail line with the Greater Monorail World that she has always deserved!
A thing that will come: Typical Gorstites overseeing the Gorst Monorail System Hub.
From there the horizon is boundless. The World over, all will hear of our triumph and call out to us: "Deliver us from the Automobile, Monorailmen! Let us ride the Monorail to the Future!"
And this Future, this gloriously monorailed Future, will begin in Gorst! Never again will Gorst be the butt of jokes, subjected to cruel mockery by television clowns. Where once they laughed at you, now -- if only you will come with us on this Monorail Adventure -- they will sing your name:
Gorst! Mighty Gorst! A New Rome of the coming Monorail Age! the center of Monorail Civilization! Bremerton will be but a quaint suburb; Olympia a minor stop; Seattle known only as an object lesson in the futility of standing athwart Monorailular Progress. Above them all will tower Gorst -- proud, triumphant, resplendent in its diadem of gleaming Monorails!
The Monorail or nothing. Which shall it be, Gorst? Which shall it be?