Recently the Port Angeles City Council approved work on Lincoln Street to improve safety.
Will the same traffic engineers that provided the safety improvements for Lauridsen Boulevard plan the work on Lincoln?
What may have looked good on paper has resulted in narrow lands difficult to navigate, diminished access for four businesses, loss of parking on Peabody, visual chaos and driver confusion.
They created a lousy mess.
Improvements at the intersection at Lauridsen and Peabody include generous bike lanes designated with wide white lines, bike pictures, left turn lanes marked with wide yellow berms, white posts, yellow posts, green squares, white squares, flags, yellow, white and chartreuse signs.
However, the road was not widened, resulting in narrow lanes difficult to navigate to add to the visual confusion.
A long red curb on Peabody added more color, but resulted in a loss of parking.
Access from the west has been lost for three different businesses; the Genealogical Society on the corner of Peabody and Lauridsen, the Boulevard beauty salon, and H. Todd’s Dental office.
The “Need to Go Natural Grocery” drive-through on the corner of Eunice and Lauridsen cannot be accessed
traveling east on Lauridsen.
One cannot even turn left on Eunice to enter from that street.
Roads are supposed to connect homes and businesses.
The city traffic planners should remember this primary objective, and control their need to use every toy in the safety marker box .
And someone should hide their paint.
Roberta Griset
Sequim