Point A
A theoretical municipal terminus. The place people from Point B are desperately keen to reach at ninety miles per hour for reasons nobody at Point C has ever understood.
Point of Interest Dossier: Point A
"Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very fast.
People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often given to wonder what's so great about point A that so many people from point B are so keen to get there, and what's so great about point B that so many people from point A are so keen to get there. They often wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell they wanted to be."
— The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Chapter 1
Spatial & Socio-Transit Dynamics
In the foundational topology of terrestrial bypass civil engineering, Point A represents the starting or ending terminus of an endless stream of agitated motorists driving hatchbacks and commercial transit vans.
- Transit Velocity: Traffic flows out of Point A at maximum allowable velocity along freshly paved dual carriageways, propelled by a profound inner conviction that whatever is happening at Point B must surely be more exciting than Point A.
- The Counter-Current: Simultaneously, an identical volume of vehicles leaves Point B traveling in the exact opposite direction toward Point A, motivated by an identical delusion.
- Cosmic Resonance: Galactic sociologists observe that this phenomenon repeats at every civilizational scale—whether between suburban English shopping estates or between the Pleiades and Alpha Centauri along Hyperspatial Express Route 42.
Nelson's Column
A 169-foot Corinthian granite monument in Trafalgar Square, London. After Earth's demolition, realizing that Nelson's Column had gone without any public outcry was the psychological trigger that made Arthur Dent grasp that England no longer existed.
Point B
The destination at the far end of the bypass. Heavily congested with travelers fleeing Point A who, upon arrival, usually turn around and dash back.