[Vision2020] The Third Street Vehicle Bridge Saga Continues

[Art Deco]

Sorry Dan, 

But 50 years ago urban planning was moving (and has moved) in the direction of making neighborhoods safe enclaves without arterials wherever possible.  Not only do arterials make neighborhood pedestrian/vehicle navigation more unsafe and undesirable, but they eliminate places where children can have friendly neighborhood games, ride their tricycles/bicycles, or people can walk across the street to chat with their neighbors.  Arterials promote/enable community/neighborhood discontinuity instead community/neighborhood cohesiveness and harmony.

Arterials should go around or between neighborhoods, not through them wherever possible.

The traffic planning for Moscow has been atrocious and special interest guided for many years.  

The current ring road is an egregious example.  There are some very simple, relatively inexpensive ways to reroute a lot of traffic from the downtown arterials, but somehow they are not part of the current plan.  

Examples:

Reroute traffic going east to north (and south to west) through the UI farm to Mix road to US 95 and/or cooperate with Whitman county to move it to Airport Road though O'Donnell Road to Mix Road to US 95.

For traffic going north to east (or west to south) reroute traffic to Palouse River Road to Mountain View Road and/or Lenville Road.

For traffic going East to south (or north to west) cooperate with Whitman County to upgrade the Old Moscow-Pullman Highway with a connection near Moscow to Palouse River Road and or upgrade the Sand Road/Palouse River Road connection.

These alternatives would be favored by the heavy local traffic and would not generally be used by non-local through traffic who some merchants delusionally think they can coerce into supplying patronage by forcing them into Moscow's downtown.

These alternatives are very inexpensive when compared to the ring road and much less disruptive to the urban and rural communities that would be quite negatively impacted by the proposed ring road.  

These are not new concepts, but stubbornness on the part of people like Walter Steed and the special interests he really represents instead of the majority of the citizens of Moscow have managed to torpedo these common sense solutions.  It would not hurt to appoint more highly qualified persons to the various planning boards.  As Saundra Lund once suggested, maybe they ought at least a minimum IQ should be required for appointment.


Wayne A. Fox
1009 Karen Lane
PO Box 9421
Moscow, ID  83843

waf at moscow.com
208 882-7975
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Dan Carscallen 
  To: vision2020 at moscow.com 
  Sent: Thursday, December 10, 2009 7:06 AM
  Subject: Re: [Vision2020] The Third Street Vehicle Bridge Saga Continues


  Garrett,



  I've made no secret about the fact that I have always been in favor of a vehicular bridge across Paradise Creek at Third Street.  The language in the plan was changed so as not to completely eliminate the option  of a vehicular bridge in the future.  Will it be built next year?  In the next five? I don't know, but whatever happens the option should be there.



  The bridge should have been built 40 years ago, in my opinion.



  DC



  -----Original Message-----
  From: vision2020-bounces at moscow.com [mailto:vision2020-bounces at moscow.com] On Behalf Of Garrett Clevenger
  Sent: Wednesday, December 09, 2009 11:56 PM
  To: vision2020 at moscow.com
  Subject: [Vision2020] The Third Street Vehicle Bridge Saga Continues



  What a waste of money, and that's just to study potentially spending more even more money to build a bridge.



  I can't believe the council would vote to threaten kids who will have to navigate more cars on their way to Lena Whitmore.



  We don't need another route to mountain view.



  Dan lives in that neighborhood.  Why would he vote for this?



  Makes no sense to me...





  Garrett Clevenger





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