At 03:28 PM 03/30/2003 -0600, Harmon Seaver wrote:
According to indymedia, those SF protests last week seemed to be pretty
effectively shutting down the financial district even without lockdowns, thru
sheer force of numbers.
Not surprising - traffic there only marginally works anyway,
and if the protests block half the street parking or a few
parking garage entrances, everything fails totally.
It's a complex system, and such things are often fragile.
Any group of Pranksters willing to buy a bunch of orange traffic cones
and some sawhorses and a few dozen credible-looking street construction signs
could do almost as well without even a large group support group,
if they got out early in the morning, and if drivers decide to
collapse the waveform by ignoring all such cones and signs,
there's be weeks of chaos afterwards until
drivers get back in the habit of obeying.
