Voice of the People: Editorial on the Michigan Project

Hey, this goes out to all of the people of Grand Terrace who live on or near Michigan Street... Thanks to the recent budget fiasco in our city, the "Michigan Project" has been put on hold. Once the high school had been completed, the plan was to do to Michigan Street pretty much the same thing as had been done to Mount Vernon Avenue. Eminent domain was to be exercised to take part of all of the facing properties (read - your front yard) to make Michigan a four-lane street. The stop signs at every intersection were to be replaced with signals. Sidewalks were also going to be put in. But before you rush to assume 'if it saves one child, it's worth it', think that spending that half-mil or so wouldn't do a darn thing about the inattentive jerk who thinks no one else on the road, including pedestrians, matters in the least. There are only a couple of periods per day during "rush hours", perhaps twenty minutes each - if that - when there is some heavy traffic along Michigan. And to all you parents whose children attend Grand Terrace Elementary School, I'd bet dollars to donuts that the "Michigan Project" would not have made the daily snarl you have dropping off & picking up your children one bit better, and possibly worse. Instead of the current three-second waits at the stop signs, we'd trade an occasional run through a green (or yellow!) light for three 60-second waits at the rest of the signals. This city is mostly built out and traffic will never be much heavier than it is now, but our rural little community still could have been made to look so much more like Orange County! Somewhere a traffic engineer and half-dozen wanna-be politicians each have a tear in an eye.