We never cease to be amazed at the ridiculous ideas some consultants can come up with, given the thousands of taxpayer dollars some government agencies will pay them to conceive.
We hate to be stereotypical, but one of the categories that seem most susceptible to these cockeyed ideas is anything related to transportation.
We don’t know why, but the state’s Department of Transportation seems to be particularly enamored of supposedly “new” or “creative” ideas, no matter how impractical.
One of the goofiest ideas they have repeatedly fallen for in recent years is to build roundabouts that are too small to handle normal traffic, especially large tractor trailers. The two most recent examples are in Burlington (along Kirkpatrick and Longpine roads) and Graham (at West Harden and West Elm streets).
We’re not sure it was the DOT’s fault, but we just recall the death of Burlington’s downtown that resulted from another brilliant consultant-generated idea of the 1970s – a pedestrian mall that closed off part of Main Street for decades, to the ultimate detriment of downtown businesses that ultimately closed up shop.
But the dumbest idea we’ve seen lately is the notion that DOT might deliberately narrow part of South Church Street, one of the busiest streets of Burlington, along a critical part of the entrance into downtown.
Last week, DOT officials trotted out this plan before Burlington city council, regurgitating much of what a consultant for the department had previously suggested: to cut two of the four travel lanes from a busy section of South Church Street that passes by City Park and Williams High School. The precise choke point – which it would inevitably become – is between Tarleton Avenue and West Fifth Street.
Now Church Street (North and South, which is concurrently U.S. Highway 70) runs the full length of the city, starting at the Haw River town limits and going all the way to Gibsonville town limits in eastern Guilford County.
During most of this span, the roadway is at least four lanes, often with an additional center lane to accommodate left turns. And at some points (primarily in portions along North Church Street), the road has six travel lanes (three in each direction) plus a center turn lane.
The affected section currently has four travel lanes (two in each direction), and a center turn lane which transitions into a median near City Park. The DOT is contemplating reducing the four travel lanes to two.
This is the most preposterous, irrational idea we’ve seen come out of any government agency lately.
The potential for subsequent traffic jams would seem to us, and we suspect to most regular Burlington residents, to be self-evident.
DOT claims that there are “so many” accidents in this area, mainly from people trying to make left hand turns, that they want to reduce the number of lanes.
The only “good news,” if one can call it that, is that in the latest version of this lame lane reduction proposal is that they would no longer put in a median barrier to physically obstruct any attempt at making a left hand turn from either of the remaining lanes of traffic.
Also, in a way that only government bureaucrats could concoct, reducing the number of lanes will actually cost more money because DOT says it would need to acquire more right of way in order to make the road path narrower. Go figure.
What is almost as astounding as the foolishness of this concept in the first place is the almost non-existent reaction of Burlington’s five-member city council.
Do the council members not have any common sense or independent judgment whatsoever?
The council members have sat, largely like bumps on a log, during two of these presentations over the past six months, raising nary a word of practical concern, much less opposition.
DOT at least claims to want “input” from the council.
The council should be forceful in withholding its approval and strongly recommending the rejection of this concept.
It is simply unbelievable that the city’s busiest crosstown thoroughfare should be reduced to the size of a typical subdivision road at the critical juncture entering/exiting the downtown area.
We can imagine that the net result of this idea, if actually implemented, will be to divert traffic to residential streets in the area and/or to Mebane Street which parallels Church Street through the downtown area.
As many road projects as DOT needs to be working on – in Burlington and elsewhere – the time and money being spent on this idea, much less the money needed in the future to implement it, is so incredibly misplaced we have to put in the category of “only something a government agency would think of.”
We can only shake our head in disbelief.
Dumb, dumb, dumb.
