Mad Scientist Wrote:
>...
> In the name of stopping untested theories,
> reliance on true believer blind faith, and utterly
> foolish wishful thinking, I'll be going to monitor
> one of my goofier local idiot Councilmembers,
> tonight. This is the kind that wants us all to
> swallow some of his own brand of "new urbanist"
> koolaide, and to "save the planet" (and cause
> gridlock and massive spillover traffic into our
> adjacent neighborhoods) by punishing us who live
> here (and who make well over 85% of those local
> trips), with "two lane" "road diets" on our few
> arterials (with daily volumes between 25,000 and
> 40,000 AADT), for using our "evil" automobiles too
> much to access our needs in life. The
> consequences of our last local election gave us
> this dumba$$.
>
> Given the madness which seems to be afflicting all
> of the fringes these days, maybe we need a
> National Academy of Science study to determine if
> we took the lead out of gasoline too late?

Yeah, I'm reconsidering whether to bother signing up as a "friend" of any of the new committees, or as a paper reviewer.

As for the 'evil automobile' saw a news item about an overhead crossing UP tracks, part of a yard, and a rail-parallel arterial. It's 4 lanes, speed limit 40 with most drivers exceeding that, with minimal shoulder masquerading as bike lanes, and no sidewalks. There's a high school on one side and the closest bus line for many is on the other (a student was quoted saying it took 1 1/2 hr to ride multiple buses from the school to home across the tracks, but 1/2 hour to walk on the roadside over the tracks to a direct bus). A student was recently killed there by a hit & run driver. Clearly, it needs sidewalks, but current project review criteria pretty much prevent that. Wonder if there's a road diet project that could be delayed a few years to yield enough money to add sidewalks to that structure? Or is doing either of those expressing too much "empathy" to be acceptable today?