Sometimes, I feel like I'm always picking on people. That doesn't mean it's unjustified though. For example, sometimes I look at what the city planners come up with for our downtown street and I wonder if they waited until they were drunk before they committed to it.
Take the NuLu Streetscape and Main Remade projects, a $17 million investment designed to prioritize safety and "economic vitality" by slowing down cars and giving more space to people on foot or bikes.
What they came up with is a series of curbs that separate the bike lane from the car lane. These curbs are causing many people to trip and fall and hurt themselves. It gets worse. These curbs flair out into the right car lane. So many cars have hit these concrete curbs that someone decided they had to put hazard cones up so drivers can see it. If you do see it in time to save your rims, you might have to swerve into the lane next to you.
That's not a safety improvement. They have a plan now to paint the bike lanes green so people can see them, but that won't stop cars from bouncing off the curbs at 25 miles an hour.
The vision might have looked good through the bottom of a cocktail glass, which is the only logical explanation for this safety hazard. But the question now is: Will they fix it?
I'm Bill Lamb, and that's my Point of View.
