© 2016 Michael Swickard, Ph.D. Maybe it’s me but it doesn’t seem
that the citizens control our elected folks. There is talk about listening to
the citizens but I see a different picture. Those we elect and hire often make
more money than us, drive better cars, have better offices and a great retirement
system. Our “servants” have a retirement system while most citizens do not.
Who are the giving units providing
benefits and who are the rulers commanding obedience? Did you think they are
our servants? Silly to think that. We’re the burro putting the money into their
coffers and they are the monarchs who rule us.
Many, not all of them, can barely
contain their contempt of citizens. And they are quick to offense when one of
their subjects questions them.
Over the last two decades I have
been laughed at for wanting the main roads in my city to have their traffic lights
timed. One elected representative asked if I needed my food cut up also. Another
said timing the traffic lights was impossible.
We sent men to the Moon. Timing the
main arterial road lights would be a snap. They don’t want to because it isn’t
their idea and they hate pushy citizens.
I was thinking about drivers like
myself who drive a block, get a red light; drive a block get another red light etc.
It is a waste of resources to stop, get going and then stop repeatedly.
What made me think of this is that
the New Mexico Department of Transportation has been replacing a freeway bridge
in Las Cruces over Missouri Avenue. The job has taken a year. Recently it was
announced that work done to improve the safety of the nearby streets would be
torn out by the city because the city did not agree that the state should
construct safer intersections.
We taxpayers paid to put the safety
barriers in and we will pay to take them out and have less safe intersections. The
state put in concrete curbs in the turn lanes of some intersections to prevent vehicles
from going into the opposite lane thereby causing an accident. The City of Las
Cruces apparently wants vehicles to be able to strike other vehicles unimpeded.
My uncle, Ralph Smith, was for years
the Safety Manager for the New Mexico Highway Department for District Two
headquartered in Roswell. I grew up spending summers with him so I had a front
row seat on someone who liked to talk highway safety.
From that background I could see
that the concrete curb barriers were done to protect drivers. So let’s connect the
dots: I want timed lights because that is safest. Accidents happen when
vehicles change speed. It is also a question of efficiency and not angering
drivers. Get them all going the same speed.
Likewise, over the years I have protested
in several columns putting anything in the divided street medians because the
medians are an emergency runoff area for when crap happens in the driving
lanes. Imagine if you dart onto the median to avoid an errant car and BAM you
run into a tree that is pretty, but it kills you.
The city likes the beauty of the
medians and they ignore the dangers if a motorcyclist was to wrap themselves
around one of those median trees. A death here and a death there, I guess they
don’t care.
One more thing: it is foolish to
make citizens mad while they drive unnecessarily. Because I live near the
bridge project I noticed the traffic at the bridge intersection is typically
backed up for blocks and blocks because there are single lanes and gridlock in
the intersections.
At times going East on Missouri under
the freeway the gridlock is so profound that sometimes during two or three
lights no one going East gets through because it is clogged by North and South
traffic turning East.
Recently it took around thirty minutes
to get through the intersection and people were driving over curbs close to
road rage. Is it unfortunate or is it no one in the city thinks they are our
servants? The response from the city predictably will be: how dare I criticize them?
Indeed.
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