After driving down Florida’s Turnpike more than a dozen times in the past few months, I’m getting more and more infuriated at the current effort to make Orlando disappear behind a set of walls that disconnect drivers from what’s around them. I think this will lead to less people getting off the exits to explore – after all, who knows what’s behind those walls? – making the number of casual road-trip stops drop, and will cause trouble in the communities where the walls are going up. People do NOT like walls. They aren’t comfortable. They make you feel trapped. I shot this little video yesterday morning while driving through the construction zone. It’s not pretty, but neither are the walls. Just wanted to give you a sneak peek of what’s going on along the Turnpike.
PS. Just saw my first graffiti on the walls yesterday. FDOT, you want Orlando to be perceived as another faceless drive through a major city like NYC or Atlanta, you are succeeding! This is a terrible, terrible project.
From Get A Trip:
You seem like you have a wealth of knowledge on Florida travel. If I ever do an article on Florida, sounds like you’d be the first person on my list to talk with. So far we are just in web development and our travel site will go live in August of 2009. We were wondering if you ever do any freelance or Ghost writing for travel articles? You can email if so. Anyways nice blog and memories of Florida for me.