Wonder who gave the phrase "Bell the cat"

In a recent Q&A session answered by Elon Musk in the Hyperloop Design competition for the college grads that happened in Texas. One enthusiastic grad, who has his origins from New Delhi, India voiced over the topic of  ODD-EVEN decision for cars to operate in the city. Elon was asked on how the Hyperloop would answer to this problem and Elon Musk with his impeccable brilliance gave the audience the answer, " Well, I think people should build more tunnels instead of roads, you know.. they are just holes in the ground...."

Sparked by the though of this i wondered what is it that makes it so uncommon for us to complain about the roads and traffic congestion when Elon could come up with some new found idea. pondered by the though i came on to some things that i read an still got bewildered by the idea.

A few years back in an article from Gizmodo i read about what happens when one run out of land to work with and the resulting land grab and the exploitation of available ground would result in. Let me introduce you to city of Manhattan, the very famously known around the world as the New York.

http://gizmodo.com/watch-new-york-city-s-boundaries-expand-over-250-years-496440467

You will start to wonder, "so you are here to say that we will run out of land and start to build road in the sea or increase the height of the land so as to make it higher the better( more like making pride rock) of one's own!"

No! that's not my point. The point is I further pondered in this topic and ended up reading an article from National Geographic,showing that the Central Park in Manhattan alone has been untouched in the Vertical level of the city. All the other Upper, Lower and Middle Manhattan has had its land filled over and over its base sea level over the century, that now cartographers from the 21st century are shell shocked to find drawings from the 1800s and before seem so illogical to the actual. The number is more that 15 Ft of land has been filled up, meaning that the urban spaces have now become more elevated than the central park's original ground level. 

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/09/rising-seas/folger-text

A prominent junction called Adyar Flyover ( Notice the fringes of asphalt that grew over the years)

Now: This is all the while ago about a modern metropolis New York, Lets jump to this side of the planet. The city of Chennai, India. You will be surprised that just recently have we survived the storm that hit us in Dec 2015, a 140 cm rainfall in a span of 3 days. After the lashing rains for about the period of 3 days and following moderate rains of 3 days in the total 6 days of rain almost all that is to be called as Chennai became like a big puddle of water. Just to give you a good picture here is a video to my channel where I uploaded the experience of taking a walk to buy some biscuits and food for the 4th day of rain alone as my mother and father were drenching and pouring water out of our house as it had a feet of water inside.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXs9VQUMPGk

Each fringe of line is a new layer of road laid over the years ( possibly a few decades)

In all this experiences I was startled to notice that the reason water got so much clogged was because that there were not much visible storm water drains in the roads and the roads are instead filled up with lots of Asphalt as it is called fondly as thar roads in India.  The system of road laying is very bizarre in Chennai (I don't assume that this is same everywhere in India, but who knows. I haven't lived in many cities in India except Chennai) a Public Works Department personnel comes to take some measurements hears that the road is in bad condition of potholes and voila he gets a whole new truck load of asphalt fills up the baddie holes and a new layer is formed. I took up my cycle on a Sunday and reached a prominent place in Adyar where I remember seeing the visible fringes of asphalt layer over the years and to my surprise, I was seeing a fresh coat of Asphalt getting laid on top of it. In less than 5 years the road has grown in to 6 Inches( pretty big in comparison to other things that people can grow!!) I took snaps on the same, let the pictures do the talking!!


 Then on the search for why do roads get to be roads, who must have been the reason for it to be there in the first place, theses were all sparking up in my mind. Again, comes a theory of interesting reads in Wikipedia articles on cattle grazing pattern.

Great deal to smooth it out!

Can you spot the Man-hole cover ?

Why the heck do they bother to have a storm drain??

3 New layers.. coming up!!

which resulted in me spending hours on to understand the concept of what the reason was for the first pathways to be made.. and then on it was made in to roads and finally in to highways.. it was all because of some cattle herder who took his flock on a grass terrain herd it of to roam around and ended up creating patches of land for people to walk and so on and so on.

It was pretty nice to read. Then again, as I wondered. Who is there to Bell the Cat?(on this 6 inch road topic), the people.. the Engineer.. the Miner who gave the Asphalt or the Mother Nature who gave me this topic to study on! or rather should I say, "Belled the Cow/Goat" on the right time by the herder. So that the roads of today would not have gotten in to the troubled hands of the people to be pestered with!