<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><DIV><DIV>On Mar 25, 2006, at 12:16 AM, Donovan Arnold wrote:</DIV><BR> I say your problem with downtown is not how little room there is for MORE cars, it is that there are TOO MANY cars. Shut downtown off from cars, use trolleys and shuttles around the center of town. The campus did it. We don't need 20,000 cars and trucks zooming around a town only 2 miles by 4 miles; it is silly and wasteful. If the city made vehicular travel more cumbersome and public and pedestrain transportation more accessible they would see stock in the downtown area rise. I hate transportation downtown, you cannot access idowntown because of all the cars and congestion. And the cars really detract from the otherwise pleasant shopping experience downtown. Downtown was not designed to hold all that traffic and shove cars in like sardines. It is much easier and safer to go to the mall when downtown gets abused with that much traffic and congestion. <BR> <BR> _DJA </DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Donovan: </DIV><DIV>I agree that it would be a great idea to make downtown Moscow a pedestrian paradise by closing it off to vehicular traffic. However that idea won't work for the simple reason that both Jackson and Washington streets are state highways. Although a [western] highway bypass has been desperately needed for many, many years, the Idaho Transportation Department doesn't agree. According to Ken Helm of the ITD, a bypass for Moscow won't be necessary for at least 20 years (I believe they did a study on this several years ago). Which means we're stuck with the state highway cutting through the heart of downtown. But keep on pushing for this idea, I think it's a great one.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>-SB</DIV><DIV><I><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></I></DIV><DIV><I><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></I></DIV></BODY></HTML>