Council missed the boat on traffic

I believe the city council completely missed the boat by unanimously approving the new paper street ordinance.

Here is why: First of all, what was the rush? Those paper streets have been there for more than 100 years and the moratorium only lasted a mere eight months. Seems like such a short time to bring 100-year-old streets back into modern times.

Heck, back in those days they did not even have cars. Which brings me to my main point. Just one week before the final vote, the traffic committee met to discuss cut-thru streets and the high traffic volume and speeds on Union Street, Brackett Street, Forest Street and many other streets throughout the city.

Who could forget the picture of the little girl and her dog standing in her yard beside the broken down fence ruined by a speeding car on her street, just think she was standing in that yard minutes before the car tore it up.

Now, the reason is obvious to me, our old streets simply cannot handle the high volume traffic, most are narrow, no sidewalks or curbs. Well gee back 50 years ago we did not have half the traffic we have today. One house today could have four cars especially if you have teenagers, trust me, I know.

No one sees the relationship to houses and cars? Now this brings me to my point. The issue of a traffic study for paper streets was brought up a few times throughout the process. The answers were very vague but basically left it up to the planning board to decide.

Leaving traffic control up to the planning board does not make any sense at all. It should be mandatory. Why? Because of the high volumes of traffic we have around the city, due in part to over housing development, with no clear plan to control it.

You know, its ironic we have curbs and sidewalks on our new developed streets, but the main arteries that support these developments the very life blood to these subdivisions have none. The city council had a great opportunity to control traffic and unite neighborhoods by voting it down, but instead passed it without any discussion at all. Now a few years down the road, many other residences will be coming forward because of traffic problems, that will be costly to the taxpayer to study and fix and in some cases will mean entire new streets.

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