As I was jolting and bumping around the other day on my way across town, I thought again that something ought to
be done about the roads. I live in the Detroit Metropolitan Area, which has no mass transit to speak of. It is a
sprawling, horizontal puddle covering hundreds of square miles. Detroit is not like your Eastern cities. Boston
covers less than two square miles. My apartment complex is that big. So, to go anywhere in Detroit, one jumps in
one’s car and jolts down the road. Unless there’s road construction. Then one tries merging down into one lane
while avoiding orange barrels. That’s the real problem with roads is the maintenance.
Cities, counties, states, and even the federal government spends millions of dollars a year, maybe billions in
total, to maintain the roads. Up here in the freeze-thaw zone, it’s even worse than places like Arizona or
Georgia. Now, road repair and reconstruction provides jobs for a number of people, but I keep thinking that there
has to be a better way.
Engineering firms have tried everything that can be done materially and mechanically. If someone really wants
to solve this problem, it’s time to turn to a new frontier: genetic engineering. It’s time to grow the roads
instead of repairing them. This problem breaks down into a number of sub-problems:
Surface: The surface of this genetically engineered (GE) roadway would have to provide a high-coefficient of
friction in all conditions. The surface has to be relatively hard and tough, as is the case with present road
materials. But it can’t be too brittle, either. It also has to be rapidly self-healing. Perhaps some sort of
material resembling bone, crustacean shell, or tree bark might be used as the basis for growing this material.
Anchorage: The roadway has to be connected to the earth beneath. We can’t have it coming loose, or peeling off
like the skin on a blister, when a truck starts skidding. So this GE road might use deep roots of cacti or trees
that are native to areas of high winds for anchorage.
Striping: Well, stripes for lanes and the edges of the road could be applied as they are now, by painting them,
but it seems inefficient if the desire is for low maintenance. Many plants and animals have patterns of colors,
sometimes even brilliant or phosphorescent. Why not engineer this new road to have its own markings? The biggest
problem with this idea is the whole concept of passing zones and no passing zones. I’m no genetic engineer, but
that seems like making things harder than they need to be. Maybe we’ll just keep the painting crews?
Restriction of Growth: Once this growing roadway is out in the world, how do we keep it from paving the planet?
The idea that occurs to me is to engineer in an affinity for present road-building materials. Maybe it would only
eat concrete and asphalt? Maybe it would have to be fed a limited amount of some special substance to grow. We
could dump it out of salt trucks. Too much traffic? Need to expand from two lanes to four? Get out the salt
trucks!
Propagation: If the road is a living thing, propagation will probably not be a problem. In my fantasies as I’m
bumping along in my car, I often wish for some altruistic mad genius to develop these roads so they’ll just spread
to fix all roadways. On the other hand, if the genetic engineering firm wants to make a gazillion dollars off of
this new product, they’ll need to make sure that they have control of growing these new roads.
Bridges: Bridges might present a different problem, since they don’t pass directly over the ground. If the
anchorage used is a root system, what does it attach to on a bridge?
Seasonal Adjustment: These roads could be engineered to create seasonal advantages. Maybe they would shunt off
heat in the summer or warm themselves in winter, melting ice and snow. They could eliminate the freeze-thaw cycle.
They could absorb moisture so the road won’t be slick.
If you’re a genetic engineer, and you’re reading this, it’s a sure fortune in your pocket. All you have to do
is perfect this new miracle plant or critter that will be the future of our roads. All Detroiters will be
grateful.
Next week, organic computers and Internet? Or, maybe not.
F. B. Knight is Curmudgeon-in-Residence at the Attila the Hun School of Management. He can be reached for questions
at
fbk@attilathehunschool.net.
