Twelve feet is the standard for interstate highways. Sixteen feet sends a message, put your foot down.

They leave the insistent monotony of the interstate for more reasonable roads. While the former slices its path through entire states, peppering them with exit signs and mile markers, these lesser cousins of the grand highways keep their manners intact, clinging gently to the hemlines of all but the most obstinate geological points of interest. Charming and sometimes a bit frightening, their paths are as unpredictable and winding as a little boy's route home from school.

This project is designed to preserve and improve two interstate highways that are critical to the transportation system in southeastern Pennsylvania.

If a woman tells you she's twenty and looks sixteen, she's twelve. If she tells you she's twenty-six and looks twenty-six, she's damn near fourty.

That sends the message that some things are more important than safety. That's not true.

It sends the wrong message to every one of our constituents.