Cartoon Tuesday: Chutes and Ladders, State DOT Style
Via Steven Higashide at Mobilizing the Region:
A board game? An unusually colorful circuit board? Could it becontemporary art? Perhaps the four sets of people represent humanity,dwarfed by the boxes and arrows which symbolize the harrowingcomplexity of modern life.
Actually, this is a real diagram from the NYSDOT Division ofEngineering’s Project Design Manual which was reprinted in the FinalEnvironmental Impact Statement for the Rt. 347 widening project. Apparently it was put there to explain the project development process in a nutshell. A convoluted, bewildering nutshell. (MTR’s intuition is that the diagram is intended as a reference guide for engineers, not the general public.)
Government agencies are often criticized for being opaque to thepublic, and this is not the way to help. Other DOTs have explainedtheir processes in much simpler ways.
To read the fine print on the diagram, check out the original image on NYSDOT's website (it's big).
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