Seen last month at the corner of Dempster and McCormack Blvd in Skokie -- two people ensconced in portable lounge chairs on opposite corners of the intersection, accompanied by a supervisor.
Asked what they were doing, one replied, "counting cars."
He said they were doing it for a firm which held a contract with the Village of Skokie.
Understandably, municipal traffic engineering departments like to have periodic updates on traffic volume at various locales. But what ever happened to those hose-like cables that stretched across several lanes to automatically count the cars?
Neighboring Lincolnwood uses them. They've been in use since the 1960s.
Too high-tech for Skokie I guess.
Or is this a way to spend Obama make-work stimulus money?
What's next? Paying people with stimulus money to rake the leaves in the Cook County Forest Preserves?
(Thanks to Charlie and Lynn Morgan of Madison, WI, who were visiting the McCormack Blvd.sculpture park that day, for forwarding the photo)
Good grief. How dumb can you get? Counting cars?
ReplyDeleteI hope they played slug-bug.
During Jimmy Carter's recession, they came up with a make work program called CETA, where they paid people to do all kinds of odd things, like plan events for kids at Park Districts -- that no parents or kids would attend -- or like clipping newspaper articles whenever the local mayor's name was mentioned. The program cost billions. It ended when Carter left and Reagan took over and created real jobs by cutting taxes to stimulate business growth.
ReplyDelete