Thursday, November 29, 2007

Catch 22

Ok so the big community meeting to discuss keeping the road I talked about yesterday closed to traffic happened last night. It seems the powers that be want to open up the road again just as soon as they can get the creek protection permits to do some work on the road ( like installing new guardrails to replace the ones that have slid down the bank and fix the road where dirt has slid out from under the roadway).  Where the city is going to get al the money to make these repairs is unknown since the city is dealing with budget shortfalls and can't even hire enough police to deal with the ever increasing crime rate.

OK here is where the Catch 22 parts come up. One argument the city is making for re-opening the road is that it is a public road so it needs to be open so all the public can use the road. The catch is that under a city resolution the road can be shut down if to many people from outside the neighborhood  are using a local road instead of the major arteries. In other words if the public uses this local road to much then yes it can be shut down.  This is good news for those of us who want to keep this road closed because most of the people who used the road in the past were from outside the neighborhood. The bad news ( again a catch 22) is that since the road has been closed for 10 years due to the landslide there is no documented study proving that the road was getting to much usage from non neighborhood traffic. In order to get the information we need to get the road closed we have to open up the road again so the study can be conducted to prove that the road should be closed to traffic again. SIGH

The irony is that if this road is opened to traffic again it will get a lot less usage by the local people ( since this narrow road will be to dangerous to walk, ride or dive on in the view of many people due to how narrow the road is and how steep the bank is leading down to the bordering creek) so the road will get a lot less usage that it is currently getting from the locals ( who the road is meant for) and be mostly used by people from outside the area who are using the road to avoid back-ups on other larger roads or using the road as a short cut.

In the end the city will likely send hundreds of thousands of dollars that could be better spent else where only to then have too conduct a study and discover that the road is getting to much non-local traffic which will open the door to the neighborhood pushing to have the road closed again. 

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