As you cruise south into Austin on the Interstate, and the highway divides between the lower local lanes and the through traffic skydeck, a barrier is created, one that reflects the city's most shameful division - between primarily white West Austin and black and Hispanic East Austin. To compound the crime, it's also an ugly, intrusive, and dangerous stretch of road. If, somehow, we could funnel through traffic off of I-35 - maybe some intelligent variation on the MoKan idea - we might then look at changing the superhighway slicing our city apart into something more civil: a parkway, perhaps, one whose construction invites an east-west cross-feed, a highway that can stitch our city together rather than a wall dividing us, a thoroughfare that reflects the natural beauty of where we live instead of a dirty, dangerous concrete and steel scar.
