It's another prime example of how oru money is spent on ROAD IMPROVEMENTS.

What, for years, was a nice four lane stretch of road with parking and a strip of land dividing the two sides has been converted to two lanes, a center lane and a smaller strip of land an parking to the west!!

Yep MILLIONS of dollars to make the road more congested and put in a center lane that really serves NO purpose.

I want to thank God for bestoying such omniscience on our holy fathers on the city council

-- maddjak (maddjak@hotmail.com), December 12, 1999

Answers

Did you find out why? In most of those cases, I've found out that it's the local citizens who petition the councils to keep the 'outsiders' from speeding down the street. If that were the case, I'm surprised they didn't put in those annoying speed bumps, or goofy intersection islands. Of course, then the question is, who is the street for? Through traffic, or local access? Through everyone elses neighborhood, and not mine? Ahh, very interesting questions. I've found many surprising answers just by going to my city council meetings, and just observing.

'You can see alot just by observing' - Yogi Berra

-- Jim Cusick (jccusick@att.net), December 13, 1999.

It is really part of the unending effort to make it so hard to drive during the commute that you will hope and pray for the light (late) rail that is being shoved down our throats. You can see the same thing all over the county; Kirkland had gone overboard on the same thing. Juanita drive has been widened a full lane only to put in 1/2 lanes for bike lanes on both sides. Bikers won't ride in because them because they are full of rocks that may puncture tires, so they just ride in the lanes for cars, as they always have and still hold up traffic. It is just unending incompetence on the part of the traffic engineers. BTW, I think one of the mandatory prerequisites for being a traffic engineer in the north end is to live in the south end so you do not have to live with the results of what you do.

-- Jim Labyak (jimlab@msn.com), December 13, 1999.

Well Jim (Cusack)It would be hard for the nieghbors to suggest it because the golf course and hospital are on one side of the street and the other side doesn't have any neighbors, just two or three cross streets that go into neighborhoods that are all insulated from the street by a buffer zone.

It WAS a main thoroughfare and now it's a mess.

-- maddjak (maddjak@hotmail.com), December 13, 1999.

"It is really part of the unending effort to make it so hard to drive during the commute that you will hope and pray for the light (late) rail that is being shoved down our throats" I think that when the results of light rail are known (slow (14mph) speed, high cost, high operating expenses, has to be augmented by bus lines anyway, never live up to inflated ridership projections), we'll wish that we'd never HEARD of light rail. The only problem is the true believers will say it's because we didn't build HEAVY rail, and their solution will be STILL MORE taxpayer's money.

-- Craig Carson (craigcar@crosswinds.net), December 13, 1999.

Thank you. That is what I tried to say but not as well.

-- Jim Labyak (jimlab@msn.com), December 13, 1999.

I hate paying a gas tax so that planners can shove a 5 lane thoroughfare through my neighborhood for those people who don't want to live near where they work. Oh, yeah, that's right, all the citizens in our area got with our city and county and discussed the matter, and now it won't be a mini expressway, hey, WE SPOKE, THEY LISTENED! Amazing. Of course,if it were the old days, a 'private' RAILROAD company would have just shoved a rail line down our throats. BTW, who's Jim (CusAck)?

-- Jim Cusick (jccusick@att.net), December 15, 1999.