From the Editor’s Desk: Unintended (Premium)

Back in November, just ahead of our return home from Mexico, we were walking back from dinner one night and approaching our apartment when we saw an armada of street construction trucks lined up on both sides of the road.

? Construction trucks?

This was curious. Until that trip, we had never seen any street work done in the area in the roughly two and a half years we’d owned the place, despite the obvious need. There was only one exception: Sometime in the previous month, the city had dug up one road in our neighborhood, about five blocks away. But it had been left unfinished, a grooved dirt surface that slowed traffic and threw dust into the air.

“Classic Mexico,” I had thought to myself, not knowing any better. But now there were trucks on our road. What would the morning bring?

Well, this is Mexico, so the morning would bring noise. Lots of noise. And not in the morning, per se: Instead, the trucks rumbled to life at about 2:30 am and set about digging up the road in the dark. Which we could only hear and not see because that road is on the other side of the building. I popped in my noise-canceling earbuds, once again thinking, “Classic Mexico.” And as I fell asleep, I was positive from all the noise that they weren’t just digging up the road next to our apartment, but were also digging up the main road in front of the apartment that we look down to from our balcony.

The next morning, we got up and went outside to see what had been done. To my surprise, the main road in front of the apartment was untouched. To my even greater surprise, the side road was only half dug up, and only for our block and the half-block south of us. Like many roads near us, this road is one-way only, and it was never marked correctly, with no painted lane lines, stop signs, or traffic lights (at least near us). The city had only dug up one of what might constitute two lanes.

“Classic Mexico,” I thought. And based on the one other road that had been dug up but never graded or finished in any way, I was certain that when we returned to Mexico City two months later in mid-January, that our road would likewise remain unfinished. That we would come back to a half dug up road.

That is not what happened.

? Fixed?

When we returned in mid-January, that side road had been completely finished, and for several blocks to the north. It was all new. The city had inexplicably painted very clean lane lines–confirming that this road, like most in this area, is technically two lanes of one-way traffic. It had also repainted the crosswalks. And while it had not added stop signs or lights anywhere–in Mexico City, it’s common to see these unmarked intersections where the boldest drivers have the right of way and motorcycles often beep as they drive through, just in case–there were blinky lights up and down the street that are only visible at night.

We didn’t realize that’s what they were until night fell. What we thought they were at first were reflectors. You’ve seen this kind of thing, I bet. Where we’ve lived in the American northeast, they often install little reflectors in the road on the lane lines that light up when they reflect back the lights from vehicles. These are used in places where it snows and there are snowplows scraping the roads each winter, so they are installed slightly embedded in the surface, and angled, so the snowplows don’t just rip them out of the road as they pass.

The similar little twinkly lights on the road were installed every 10 feet or so on this road, and three across, with one on either side of the lines and one in the middle. They’re each solar-powered, and thus self-contained. And because this is Mexico City where there’s little in the way of real weather, they were just placed on the road surface, no doubt held down by asphalt sealant of some kind.

When we headed out that night, I saw the little boxes blinking sporadically in the dark. I paused to regard this miracle of unnecessary lights, hundreds and hundreds of them running in lines up several blocks into this distance to the north, plus one block south of us.

“Every single one of these things will be dead or destroyed by the time this trip is over,” I confidently told my wife.

My theory was that the locals wouldn’t like them and that we would witness people with crossbars or similar tools literally ripping them out of the road. Or that traffic would just have its natural impact. Either way, they’d never last, and as they were dismantled one by one, I knew that they’d never be replaced. It was confusing that they were installed in the first place. “Classic Mexico,” I thought.

I was half right, in this case. No one ever bothered to rip the light boxes out of the street, from what we can see. But the center line of blinking lights was summarily wiped out down the entire stretch of newly finished road when a very large and heavy truck managed to position its tires over the center line. The weight of the thing must have destroyed the lights. And almost to a one: On most blocks, there are no blinking lights in the center anymore, and on one or two blocks, there is perhaps just a single, sad blinking light, doing its thing alone.

? Let there be light

A few days later, we were getting ready to head out to dinner or whatever, and I walked out onto the balcony to check on the sunset–almost always fantastic–and the weather (ditto). Some movement 6 stories down caught my eye, and I witnessed something suspicious, a warning sign in a city that not only tolerates noise but seems to embrace and celebrate it: A pickup truck had pulled up next to the sidewalk and two men got out and started moving a gigantic speaker out of its bed. Then I noticed that another group of people were erecting what looked like a platform of some kind on the corner next to our apartment building. It was difficult to see through the trees. But something was happening.

This could be bad. Mexico doesn’t just tolerate, embrace, and celebrate noise, it also has what I believe to be an unwritten rule that any individual is allowed to make money in any way they see fit and wherever they want to do so. And that means that some group could simply set up shop on our corner for any reason imaginable. Street performers of all kinds. A street food stand. Whatever. I was immediately nervous about what this all meant.

So we took the elevator downstairs, walked down the half flight of stairs to the street level, and stepped into a busy crowd of people instead of the normally mostly empty sidewalk. What the …? Pushing our way to the corner, I saw two police cars and several policemen, half-heartedly directing people around what was indeed a metal platform, about one foot tall, erected right up against our building. The giant speaker was on top of it.

“Qué es esto?” I asked one of the cops, gesturing at the platform.

My Spanish isn’t great. But I caught words I knew–“mayor,” “lights,” and a few others–and I assumed that what we were about to witness was the mayor of our area, called Cuauhtémoc, dedicating the new street. This was much better than what I had been worried about. This would happen quickly, the platform and speakers would go away, and everything would go back to normal. Good.

Once again, I was half right. The mayor did show up to give a quick speech, as I expected. But then she started a countdown and this side street was suddenly awash in light. The city hadn’t just resurfaced the road and put in little blinky lights, one third of which had already been wiped out. It had also replaced the old-school cobra head streetlamps, at least two thirds of which had died years ago, with new LED units. And what was once dark was now very bright indeed.

Too bright, I thought. I’ve often observed that this place we live in Mexico City is incredibly safe, that I wouldn’t think twice about my wife and daughter walking down this very road at 3 am. My wife jokes that if anything bad happens, she can always hop into one of the local artisanal dog bakeries or other upscale shops that are common here. But now this road, which was pretty dark but nice, was now perhaps overly-well lit. It took some getting used to.

Also, this is Mexico, so we’ve already experienced several nights in which all of those LED lights inexplicably don’t work and our street is once again a more comfortable dark. Speaking with friends who live on that side of the building, I was curious whether the new bright lights or blinky street lights were an issue. But they, like us, live above the lights, and it hasn’t affected them at all. And as noted, we just kind of got used to it.

? Aftermath

The next day, we were working in the apartment when we clearly heard a loud accident down at the intersection. This was surprising. One might expect a place with no street signs, busy intersections, and crazy drivers to experience a lot of accidents, but in the now three years that we’ve lived here, we’d only heard one before and had never witnessed any. Somehow, the crazy system here, whether it’s official or just understood, seems to work.

OK, so now we’ve been aware of two accidents. No problem, it’s a big city, these things happen. I’m still surprised that they don’t happen more often.

Except that now they do.

We’ve now heard or witnessed several accidents at the intersection our building stands on, an intersection that is now the home of the single best road in Roma Norte and is so well lit at night you can see every damn wire–and there are literally hundreds of them–connected to the telephone pole.

As bad, now there is often traffic on this little side road next to the apartment, traffic that can extend for blocks. We’ve actually had trouble crossing the street sometimes. As noted, we have new crosswalks now, but we also lack stop signs and streetlights. If you want to cross, the Darwinian rules of Mexico–official or otherwise–apply: The most aggressive have the right of way, and that’s as true of pedestrians as it is of vehicles.

Of course, as pedestrians, we have other concerns, too. There isn’t just the traffic, the cars and trucks that now have two clearly marked lanes to clog up. There are also motorcycles, mopeds, and bikes. None of which observe any rules whatsoever, and many of which drive the wrong way down one-way roads like ours. It’s like a game of Frogger made real.

⁉️Why ask why

It suddenly dawned on me what was happening.

In Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, road repair occurs on some schedule. The towns we lived in would resurface each road in turn, over whatever number of years. And by the time every road had been fixed, it was time to start the process over again. Round and round we go.

We don’t have enough time or experience here to know how this works in Mexico City, officially. But it is very clear to us that the roads–and sidewalks–in our area, and in much of this place, haven’t been resurfaced or patched in any way in many years. There appears to be no schedule. And it’s likely that some administration will come in with whatever priorities, and things happen … or don’t happen.

For example, there is a gorgeous park one block south of us who complete renovation was championed by the previous mayor of Cuauhtémoc, which we know because their name is now plastered all over it. The result is a place that is incommensurately nice compared to the surrounding neighborhood. We love it, and we walk there a lot. But it doesn’t make a lot of sense.

But now we have this road, this one road, the only road in Roma Norte, that is completely finished and resurfaced. It’s perfect. It’s flat, with no speed bumps–or topes, as we call them here–has cleanly delineated lane lines, and it’s well-lit at night. If anything, it’s too well-lit. And now, everyone who drives in this area, which is otherwise full of streets with so many potholes that it resembles World War II-era France, knows this. And so everyone diverts so they can drive on this one perfect road. Which is just a side road but now the best road. And they speed, and drive like they do, and they go through intersections with no stop signs or stop lights without a care in the world. And now there are frequent accidents.

But it’s worse. So much worse.

There’s a major hospital two blocks east of, on the other side of a very busy main road. And a smaller hospital about three blocks north of us bordering this side road. And now there are ambulances rushing up and down this road, sirens blazing, no doubt because this is now the past route to take because this is the only nice road in all of Roma Norte.

This place is also being gentrified with new apartment buildings everywhere, and there are at least two big construction projects we can see from our balcony, and often hear as the BANG-BANG-BANG of whatever earth-digging machinery is used. On many days, three or more huge and empty dump trucks will idle on that side road, waiting for when whichever nearby construction project needs them to haul away the dirt they are digging out of the ground. And so, in addition to the BANG-BANG-BANG noises, there are loud, rumbling, idling trucks on our road. Which are no doubt there because it is so perfect and level.

I guess this is a sort of “get what you wish for” scenario, not that I’d ever really wanted the city to repave the road per se, and I certainly never wanted brighter streetlights. But it’s pretty clear that no one ever thought through the unintended consequences of fixing this one street. If this were part of an area-wide project to improve all the roads, or at least those that need it the most, this would have never happened. But this is Mexico. And here we are, four months later, and only this one road has been redone. It stands as a monument to the level of thinking exhibited by our mayor, which I will assume is, pardon the pun, surface-level at best.

Put another way, it turns out our actions have consequences. Who knew?

Classic Mexico.