Highway construction, torrential rain, and design…

I live about 25 miles from my place of employment. Part of my commute takes me through a foothill canyon which is undergoing new highway construction. The existing two lane road, which runs from north to south, is being converted into a divided four lane highway (two lanes in each direction). The new route follows a path adjacent to the existing roadway, crossing it only once at a point close to its northern boundary. South of this intersection the existing route is to the east of the new route, and north of the intersection it is to the west. The construction has been going on for about two years now. For the first year and a half construction on the new highway had virtually no physical impact on the traffic flow of the existing roadway. About 6 months ago, a section of the new roadway between the southern boundary and the intersection to the north, was opened to the public. This connection consisted of a “transfer of flow” for traffic and, to facilitate its safe occurrence, happened during the middle of the night. It involved closing the existing route for approximately 8 hours, during which traffic was re-routed onto a detour around the entire stretch of road. Also, as the new highway was connected to the existing roadway, the section of existing roadway that was being replaced was closed off from public access. The next morning, however, instead of finding a new section of divided four lane highway to drive on, motorists were greeted only with a new section of two lane highway. This is because the section of new highway connected to the existing roadway during the night was the southbound side only (i.e., the western two lanes) of the divided four lane highway. The reason for this is really quite simple. The new highway is not being constructed over the existing highway but will be adjacent to and separate from it. The existing road will not be left as is, but will be demolished and hauled away, with the landscape returned to its natural state (keep in mind that this is California and environmental concerns are offensively stringent). Construction vehicles need to access the old road in order to demolish and remove it. Additionally, the northern section of the new roadway must now be constructed. In this southern section of the project, the most efficient access to the old road and the northern section is by way of the northbound side of the new route. Therefore, the most efficient means with which to complete the overall project entails temporarily reserving the northbound lanes of the southern section of the new highway. I’m not privy to the construction plans for this project but, given what has been done so far, I would imagine that when the northern section of the new highway opens there will still be a section of that new highway left closed to the public (in order for the final demolition to occur on the old roadway). Once the entire section of the old roadway is demolished and the environmental issues satisfied, then I would expect a final transfer of traffic flow to occur which will establish the highway as it is currently planned, that is, as a divided four lane highway. It’s interesting to see how a complex enterprise such as this is undertaken. The existing roadway is a functioning system which allows for traffic flow between the entrance to, and exit from, the foothill canyon. The construction processes used to construct a new roadway involve a myriad of interrelated actions which, if not done in proper sequence, will either result in a failed system, or in a system demonstrably much more inefficient than currently exists. Some events in the process are entirely dependent on the occurrence of preceding events. For example, large drainage pipe (8’+ in diameter) cannot be set until it is delivered, and it cannot be delivered until it is shipped, and it cannot be shipped until it is manufactured and purchased. What’s more, the pipe cannot be set unless the site is excavated and the base prepared. Also, proper equipment and personnel are needed if the pipe installation is to be successful – it would do no good for the pipe to arrive with no equipment available to install it. So the proper type and right quantity of equipment must be provided, either by lease or by purchase, and within the proper timeframe. The new highway, upon final completion, will be a functioning system allowing for increased traffic with less risk of closure due to accidents (remember that the newer highway is divided). However, until the day the last construction vehicle leaves the site, the interim versions of the highway are not necessarily more efficient than the old roadway. So, unless one knew in advance what the ultimate goal of the construction was, the multitude of steps taken to reach the final opening would not only be meaningless, they would be considered detrimental to the survivability of the entire system. Do you see where this goes? If the system doesn’t continue to function (i.e., traffic flow), then the system fails. Yet it is only through complex intelligent action that one can direct the system to adapt to change without having it fail altogether. We readily understand that the events occurring in highway construction are both planned and goal oriented. What would we expect to occur on this particular portion of my commute, however, if we were to leave the administration of this highway construction to that of purposeless and random processes? I suppose we would expect system failure. Even so, one might argue that, given enough highway systems, changing at a fast enough rate, over enough time, it is logically possible for a two lane system to evolve into a divided four lane highway purely by chance (provided, of course, that the changes occurred in small enough steps and that the changes were of the sort that the system’s survivability was maintained). So I guess the question for the ultimate skeptic is, do we have enough systems, changing at the required rate, over enough time? But, simply getting numerous complex processes to work in concert with each other isn’t the only problem that random chance faces. I work in planning and scheduling, and do you know what one discovers when working in that discipline (for even a short amount of time)? No matter how hard you try, you cannot reliably predict the future. Yep. I know it’s surprising to find that out, but it just doesn’t happen. Despite all your efforts at planning, the future is chock full of unforeseen events. Even when you think you’ve planned for them specifically they seem to sneak in where you least expect it. Take rain - yeah - let me tell you about rain. We recently experienced some heavy rains in southern California. We had some storms that dropped anywhere from 3 to 15 inches of rain. Some parts of the country are used to getting amounts like that in short periods of time… we aren’t. Despite the best efforts of the construction planners on the highway project, the highway flooded. The flooding closed the highway for several days. The “system” failed. In the middle of “transition,” an intelligently guided transition at that, it was still vulnerable. The newer system, with its higher elevation and proper drainage channels, would have been much more likely to “survive” this particular unforeseen event. If an intelligently guided system can so easily succumb to an unforeseen natural event, what reason is there to expect a system guided by blind chance to survive? Despite the fact that the highway construction scenario I described includes a goal, we must not lose sight of the fact that the evolutionary scenario, the one in which we are asked to believe produced the diversity of life we see today, declares that there is no explicit goal in change (except for, as I’ve argued elsewhere, the implicit goal of survival). What this means is that we must take away all instances of planning from our highway construction scenario if we are to attempt to mimic the evolutionary pattern. The hopeful monster that beat the odds, and resulted in a new four lane divided highway adjacent to where once stood a two lane road, must have done so in such a manner that the system not only remained viable, but whose function improved, throughout the entire process. In attempting to imagine such a system we see the operators of earth movers, backhoes, scrapers, skip loaders, dump trucks, bulldozers, water trucks, delivery trucks, cranes, pavers, and concrete trucks all moving chaotically to and fro, operating their equipment at will. We see construction workers installing drainage channels, laying electrical lines, painting roadways, erecting signposts and light standards regardless of whether the site was properly prepared. In the ensuing chaos, even over a multitude of similar canyon projects, system failure would be rampant. Any form of “holding stations” or “mini-processes,” which allow partial completion or function to be reserved is not allowed, for in a truly random sequence there can be no anticipated system goal and any imaginary sequences must provide function for the moment at hand. While the construction of the new highway by such a method is logically possible it is, for all intents and purposes, practically impossible. Yet, we are asked to believe that biological systems, which dwarf the highway project in terms of integrated and irreducible complexity, were produced in such a manner.