My wife and I live an average distance away from a town called Bay City, MI. There are a few things that make Bay City a sort of well known place. Besides the fact that it is where Madonna lived as a child for a short time, it is also an international port given its proximity to Lake Huron as it sits right at the mouth of the Saginaw River.
It's actually the Saginaw River that gives me some of the inspiration for this post. It effectively splits the town of Bay City into two separate sections. What used to be two distinct towns called Bay City, and Wenona are now all considered Bay City. Of course, when you have a river, there is always the need to get over that river and Bay City is no exception boasting an incredible four bascule bridges.
@mrsbozz and I lived in Bay City for a time after we were first married and there is a running joke in the city that you will always be late no matter where you want to go. If you aren't stopped by a train, you will be stopped by one of the draw bridges being open. The bridges are/were owned by a combination of the city and the state. They are quite old and with repairs creeping into a number the budget couldn't sustain, it was decided that a handful of the bridges would be sold to a private company and turned into toll bridges.
On a side note, the bridges in these photos are not in Bay City, they are in Grand Rapids, MI, but it turns out I don't have any photos of the bridges in Bay City, so this is the best I can do.
Anyway, so they sold two of the bridges to this company called Bay City Bridge Partners or something like that. If you ever wanted to see just how petty a group of people can be, start charging them for something that used to be free. My brother in law works in a building that has a view of one of the two bridges that are now toll bridges and he said he sees maybe one or two cars an hour go over the thing.
It doesn't help that when the tolls were first implemented the company had all kinds of issues with the system. People were getting hundreds if not thousands of dollars in bills in the mail due to erroneous readings of their crossings over the bridge. Needless to say, things have only gotten worse. One of the state owned bridges is currently demolished as they are rebuilding it and as you can imagine that is going to take a decent amount of time to complete. That leaves the two toll bridges and the single state owned bridge left.
As you can imagine, the non-toll bridge has seen a massive uptick in traffic over the past couple of months. On top of that, the private company decided they were going to raise prices and no longer offer an unlimited pass for a flat monthly fee to residents.
Needless to say, the residents are not amused. Protests have ensued, civil unrest is reaching a peak, and the city is even contemplating what they might need to do to take back possession of the two bridges. Which leads me back to the title of this post. The intention was to sell the bridges to someone who could afford to handle the repairs on them (best intentions). Unfortunately, here we are now with costs to residents going up, the non-toll bridges getting congested and by default more worn from additional use, and basic displeasure from how this is all playing out (worst outcomes).
You might remember a short time ago I had a project at work where we were having new copiers installed in our buildings. Along with the copiers, we implemented a new (to us) software suite called Papercut which allows us to manage the copiers a little more easily. With the software we can push out printers remotely to specific users. We can also implement secure printing which requires users to input a code on the copier before they can access their sent print jobs or make copies.
It also allows us to track how much is being printed and copied by each user. While I do think we print way too much where I work, it isn't my intent to be a watch dog. I have more important things to do. This switch really was done with the best of intentions. Security is paramount these days and the secure printing aspect alone makes it worth it.
Of course, we have had our fair share of snags along the way. Due to a firmware mismatch, the devices aren't working as expected and obviously civil unrest has ensued. I have people "talking shit" about the devices to their colleagues. Likewise they have expressed their displeasure to me in various forms. I'm pretty sure I am about a week away from a union grievance being filed against me. Even though it wasn't my decision alone to do this. Which leads us back to worst outcomes.
It's hard not to take stuff like this personally. It's also hard not to second guess your decisions when things don't go as smoothly as you had hoped. This is a perfect example of why "Decision Paralysis" happens. I'd like to think this is why I make the big bucks, but in the public sector, that couldn't be further from the truth.
Fingers crossed this all gets worked out sooner rather than later!
Do you have any best intentions but worst outcomes stories? How did you handle it?
Sports Talk Social - @bozz.sports
Unfortunately these sell the road (or bridge in this case) to a private company things—or lease it for 75 years in the case of the indiana toll road and 99 years for the chicago skyway—these deals are almost always shortsighted and ripoffs to both the gov which isn't being paid enough (but we can imagine corruption was involved; maybe some expensive steak dinners and some under the table transfer) and to the public which still has to pay the same taxes that were suppose to be used for the road and are now hit by an ever increasing toll.
Sorry to hear you are overhearing shit about the printer. I think that case is probably more about people just always hating change. I remember when I worked in IT at meijer. Every single change to the store would get complaining. Even when we upgraded the cash registers that made things incredibly easier for the cashiers, almost 100% of the cashiers bitched constantly for months about it. People just hate change (even positive change).
Yes, it seems to be a pretty corrupt system all around. I definitely think this was done with the best intentions, but it just didn't work out the way they had hoped with the bridges. I think eventually people will get used to this. It would have helped if we didn't have this firmware issue right off the bat!
Your comment is upvoted by @topcomment
Info - Support - Discord
they may have had the bets of intentions with sellign the bridges, but seems it has backfired horrible eveyr which way
!pimp
It's horrible. I was reading a post on Facebook last night that the company made and the comments were just brutal. I don't think there is a single person who is happy with them right now.
I think in this case the people are warranted to be upset, but seems to me on social media these days people are always upset about somehting
Yes they are, and yes, this situation was completely mishandled. It's blowing up in their face now.
Ahhh these kinds of things just suck. Yeah handling it with the best intentions but biting you in the ass. I guess this also might have happened with the bridge. Good intentions, sucky outcome.
Yeah I guess we all have these kind of situations. I work in surgery, in this sector this more than often happens. The idea of a surgery to improve someones quality of life doesnt always have to end up in that way....You know what I mean right?
Yeah, I totally get what you mean. There is always a dice roll with stuff like that. We just do the best that we can with the knowledge that we have.
@bozz Hold yourself for,dealing with the consequences of unanticipated difficulties is never pleasant.It's like you are trying your hardest to solve the copier problems.
I really am trying to take the high road and remove obstacles for the staff. Even if they can't see it.
On many days, I will drive 20 minutes OUT of my way to avoid a toll. Fuck em! That type of stuff pisses me off. I've been that way most of my life. Some of the tolls I can't avoid which bothers me a little bit but I do make it a point to drive on different roads that don't have the damn things. Some of the areas you can't get to without going through the toll which is incredibly frustrating lol.
There are some pretty nasty differences between how things are run now versus how they were run 20 or 30 years ago. So many things were done because they served the public and were part of taxes and stuff. Now we are filled to the brim with rent-seeking parasites and it's disgusting. We will eventually reach our limit of this parasitic behavior, but I'm not sure when that is..
Haha, I don't blame you for that. I bet you have that setting turned on in maps for it to avoid toll roads. I usually turn that on too. It's sad how even the most mundane things these days have leaned into the corruption.
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:u37t33dyaufvrqujwmvm54ln/post/3lj5vopcyo22o
The rewards earned on this comment will go to the author of the blog post.https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:u37t33dyaufvrqujwmvm54ln/post/3lj5vopcyo22o
Discord Server.This post has been manually curated by @steemflow from Indiaunited community. Join us on our
Do you know that you can earn a passive income by delegating to @indiaunited. We share more than 100 % of the curation rewards with the delegators in the form of IUC tokens. HP delegators and IUC token holders also get upto 20% additional vote weight.
Here are some handy links for delegations: 100HP, 250HP, 500HP, 1000HP.
100% of the rewards from this comment goes to the curator for their manual curation efforts. Please encourage the curator @steemflow by upvoting this comment and support the community by voting the posts made by @indiaunited..
This post received an extra 1.28% vote for delegating HP / holding IUC tokens.
The problem with people is that they want progress, but they don't want things to change.
Very true!
dang that's actully pretty wild of a story. If people are so upset about it then they can all pitch together and pay taxes for the bridge lol
I can see both sides of it. The bridges were free for so long that this is a huge shift. Maintenance costs a lot, but gouging the people who you rely on for the revenue isn't going to work well either.
Your reflections on how even the best of intentions can lead to unpredictable consequences really resonate with me. Thank you for sharing your thoughts!
Thanks for your great comment! I appreciate it!
Good intentions pave the pathway to hell so they say... Toll bridges the deal was made and there's no going back. Electronics with a government facility, almost the same thing. Decision paralysis is a very real thing, I've been there many times. The sad thing is all you can do is make due until there's more cash allocated to new hardware... Good luck!
Yeah, hopefully eventually the people who are complaining the most will retire and then it won't be as big of a deal!
Those bridges can tell more stories than any other
For sure!