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There is construction on the street that I live on that will continue through 2026. It is also a one-way street. The construction has closed a portion of the street completely, meaning that effectively, folks on either end of the closure have to violate the one way designation in order to simply get to and from our homes.
This is, clearly, A Problem.
But the reason why it’s a problem is not what you think.
Commercial GPS systems and Apple Maps have designated the street as completely closed, which has horribly impacted our ability to engage with any services that involve people having to come to our homes. UPS and FedEx have deemed everything sent to us as “undeliverable.”
Anything carried out by gig workers, many of whom don’t have strong command of English, is just impossible, from grocery delivery to food delivery to rideshare.
Many of my neighbors are senior citizens, or disabled or both. Delivery and rideshare are life sustaining for them. Many no longer have their own cars, and use rideshare for doctor visits, religious services and to vote (they did mail-in ballots but wanted to go in person) and this is taking a toll. Two are preparing to sell the homes they’ve lived in for decades. But others are mad, because there’s no obvious solution here.
City officials say they have no answers. They didn’t tell anyone the street is closed.
And technically, even if they did, and could issue a new statement to update the situation, it’s still officially designated a one-way street, so the partial closure will still hamstring anyone relying solely on GPS to navigate here because it won’t allow someone to drive the wrong way, and it’s inevitable, either coming or going.
If everything we possibly needed could come via USPS or Amazon, we’d be set. They are showing up despite the closure. (The level of “no damns to give” of Amazon drivers would be admirable if it weren’t driven by performance metrics and fear.)
But USPS and Amazon don’t run the world so we’re kinda screwed.
For another 19 months.
If the city offered to buy us out, with a fair market +25% + costs offer, we’d start packing tomorrow. (It’s a city construction project. They did this to us.)
It’s like we rolled the clock back a decade, to before the gig economy opened new doors for people like us: disabled, senior citizens, people without their own vehicles, moms with too many small kids to take to the store on the bus. But now, none of us have the network of friends or family who will step in and help, because people have stopped thinking about extending shopping or ride assistance to folks because we can pay for that now. No one has to volunteer to take Aunt Mary to the doctor.
There is something to unpack about how we have commodified a lot of the things that we used to do for one another out of kindness or religious imperative or familial responsibility or just love and care.
But whatever discussions we might have about dissolved networks of care and how that links to the “everyone is lonely” phenomenon and how we rebuild human connection, I just want all of my neighbors to be able to get their groceries, and that’s a problem I can’t solve.