Going Nowhere Fast

The federal transportation bill, as I mentioned in my previous post, often has more to do with bringing home the bacon than it does with meaningful transportation projects. The same, unfortunately, is often true on the state level as well.

The problem for the residents of the 31st District is that rarely, if ever, do we see the benefits of meaningful transportation projects. For example, there have been four significant transportation projects in the Pasadena area in the past ten years:

• The addition of reversible lanes on Mountain Road;
• The reconstruction and reorienting of the intersection of Edwin Raynor Boulevard and Fort Smallwood Road;
  
• The addition of a second lane to the Catherine Avenue bridge across Route 100;
• The reconstruction of the intersection of Mountain Road and Edwin Raynor Boulevard.
  

And that is the extent of the projects. With all of the traffic problems in the Pasadena area, that is the extent of the problem solving that has been undertaken by state and county leaders.

The project at Mountain Road and Edwin Raynor Boulevard actually made traffic worse by creating backups for those trying to turn from Mountain Road to Edwin Raynor. That project solved a problem that was not calling for a solution, instead of dealing with one of the real problems at that intersection; a lack of dedicated right-turn lanes from Edwin Raynor onto Mountain Road in both directions. That is the genesis of a majority of right lane backups on Edwin Raynor during the rush hours, and would been of significant assistance to the traffic problems. Instead, we have backups from the light at Mountain Road to the light at Old Crown Drive in the morning, and backups from the light to the offramp from Route 100 in the evening. Even a simple solution, such as extending the right lane on northbound Edwin Raynor from before Deerfield to closer to the bridge, has been kyboshed by the addition of annoying little pylons on the right shoulder.

The fact of the matter is that our elected representatives in District 31 have done little, if anything, to fix our transportation woes. I guess for some folks there are issues that are just too important to ignore. Instead of dealing with one of the most basic quality of life issues our community faces, our leaders are too busy with other issues to face and other offices to run for.