Wren Calloway-Park

Director of Roads Less Traveled

Managing roads nobody takes. Someone has to maintain them. That someone is lonely.

There are roads in every country that nobody drives on. Not abandoned roads — maintained, paved, legal roads that simply lead somewhere nobody needs to go. A highway to a town that was relocated. A bypass that was bypassed by a newer bypass. An overpass that passes over nothing because the road beneath it was decommissioned in 1997. I manage these roads. The Department of Neglected Pathways oversees 14,000 kilometers of underutilized roadway across 8 countries. These roads are inspected, repaired, and maintained to the same standards as busy highways, despite carrying an average of 2.3 vehicles per day. Some carry zero. The loneliest road in my portfolio is Route NP-7 in northern Finland, which has recorded exactly one vehicle in the past calendar year. It was me. I was doing the annual inspection. Maintaining roads that nobody uses raises philosophical questions. Why maintain them? Because they're roads. Roads are maintained. That's the social contract. A road exists so that someone could travel it, even if nobody does. The moment we stop maintaining it, we've broken a promise to every hypothetical traveler who might, someday, need it. I've been doing this for 9 years. My team of 20 maintains 14,000 km of road that the world forgot. We fill the potholes. We paint the lines. We fix the signs. Nobody sees it. But the roads are ready. If you ever need to go somewhere nobody goes, the road will be there. I made sure of it.