Once Upon a Time...

Once upon a time in a TXDOT meeting far far away, the Council of I-1o Wizards gathered to discuss the endless congestion faced by drivers on that road. After the introductory chant and opening ceremony, the Grand Poobah got up and said, "Fellow Wizards, we have a serious issue. Our humans are spending up to one hour at a time driving to and from downtown."

One wizard suggested hesitantly, "Perhaps they should have thought of that before moving to Katy?"

"SILENCE," shouted the Grand Poobah. "These humans need relief. These humans need help. These humans need a great Katy Freeway Expansion project."

The Council of I-10 Wizards was stunned. No wizard had ever dared to expand I-10 since the last expansion. This Grand Poobah was a grand one indeed.

In the great tradition of councils everywhere, the Grand Poobah set up a sub-team of wizards. That sub-team was tasked with creating a team charter, a list of goals, a timeline for achieving those goals and a communication plan for communicating the goals to the council at large. The sub-team was then required to regularly communicate its goals with wizard council, the Grand Poobah and the team sponsor who was required, by the wizard council's charter, to be a non-council member. This was all achieved in the reasonable time of 2 years.

After those two years, a sub-sub-team was created to develop the construction plan. They came up with this:

The Grand Poobah was not pleased. Neither was the council. Neither was the team sponsor. So, in the grand tradition of sub-sub teams, the charter was modified, the communication plan was retooled and a new leader was appointed. This leader was called the Grinch. The Grinch was a very unhappy man. He felt that working on this project was beneath him. He also felt that humans were lazy. He felt that they had been driving along in peace for far too long. Yes, they had to sit in traffic for hours on end, but that was better than flying a broom through the very cold night sky. This wizard felt that humans were going soft since the invention of fire. He had no sympathy for their plight. At the same time, he was a capable bureaucrat. Therefore, he came up with this plan:

Now, this plan has two advantages. 1) It achieves the goal of the sub-sub-team in alleviating traffic concerns 2) It does so in such a way that all humans that travel anywhere near it will suffer nervous breakdowns at the rate of 1 per week for the duration of the project which you say is only 3 years but will turn out to be the worst and longest 3 traffic years ever.