Welcome to Ontario’s very NEAR future….

Thanks to WCO for this one.

Lights Go Out In Spain As Cuts Plunge Highways Into Dark

Cars went barreling along the highway in darkness, ferrying families from Madrid to the beaches of Catalonia during the Easter holiday season, the black stalks of unlit streetlamps flicking past their windows. Truck drivers honked angrily as motorists switched on their full beams to pick out curves in the road, momentarily dazzling oncoming traffic.

Motorists traveling along the main highway linking the Spanish capital to Seville and the rest of the south face similar challenges.

“In some stretches it looks like they’ve been switching off the lights, in others they are missing the bulbs or the cables,” says Pascual Cabello, 32, who runs a fleet of eight trucks. “It’s only going to get worse,” he adds.

The most draconian spending cuts on record are plunging Spain’s cities and highways into darkness as ministries and mayors struggle to pay for basic services, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its May 14 issue. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is trying to pare the country’s deficit by about 27 billion euros ($35 billion), an amount equivalent to almost a third of central government spending last year, to appease European officials and bond investors.

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