[Vision2020] Residents Sound Off About Third Street Bridge

[Tom Hansen]

>From today's (October 26, 2005) Moscow-Pullman Daily News with a special
thanks to Alexis Bacharach.

Fifty voices united in opposition to the Third Street bridge - Perhaps now
the city council will get a clue.

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Residents sound off about Third Street bridge

By Alexis Bacharach, Daily News staff writer

Nearly 50 residents expressed their opposition Tuesday night to a proposed
vehicular bridge that would connect Third Street and Mountain View Road. 
They were among the roughly 100 people packed into a conference room at the
Hamilton Indoor Recreation Center for a public workshop hosted by the Moscow
City Council. 

"It's a horrible plan," said Linda Pike, who lives in one of the
neighborhoods surrounding Third Street. "The culture and community values
here have always been to protect pedestrians. Safety is a huge issue here." 

Pike said the existing intersections on Mountain View Road are unsafe for
pedestrians and bicyclists, especially children. 

"This will only exacerbate the problem," she said. "We need to look at
traffic planning for the city as a whole and not just piecemeal it
together." 

"Don't just rip through another neighborhood."

The proposal to connect Third Street and Mountain View came from the city's
transportation commission as a recommendation to the council, but it has not
gone any further than the Public Works and Finance Committee. 

Public Works Director Les MacDonald said the intention behind the proposal
is to create more direct routes from one end of the city to the other.
Funding for the project likely would be sought through transportation
grants. 

"As Moscow continues to grow, the demands on the transportation system will
go up," he said. "The few streets that do go east to west are going to see
increased traffic. The need was fairly apparent to the transportation
commission."

Local engineer and east Moscow resident Larry Hodge was the only resident at
Tuesday's meeting who spoke in favor of a vehicular bridge. He pointed out
that city planners have intended to connect Third and Mountain View for 40
years. 

"I would like to see a bridge over Paradise Creek," he said. "It would make
getting to work downtown a lot easier. This project has been planned for a
long time." 

Nils Peterson said former city planners gave the community a gift, by not
connecting the streets 40 years ago. 

"They gave us the choice," he said. "We can change our former intentions." 

Residents said they worried the connection would jeopardize the safety of
children at nearby Lena Whitmore Elementary School and destroy the character
of the surrounding neighborhoods. 

"I've heard the purpose of this is connectivity," Pike said. "Are we talking
about connectivity for cars or for people, and at what price?" 

Rich Levengood, who lives on North Hayes Street said the project raised many
questions in his mind about cost, objectives and other issues. 

"I haven't seen any data at this time that justifies this," he said. "We're
going through a high school campus, an elementary school campus and putting
a major arterial through a neighborhood."

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See you at the polls, Moscow

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho


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