By: Diane Benjamin
Government has forgotten why they exist and we let them get by with it. Government has one mission: To secure our unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
It isn’t government’s job to predict the future, redistribute wealth, or do anything more than the bare minimum necessary to maintain a civil society. Citizens allowed to create their own future and keep their own money made us the envy of the world.
Complete Streets threatens your rights!
Citizens were told Monday night that this program will make streets safer for everybody. Tell that to the guy who was killed this week in Normal at a 4-way stop. Drivers have a difficult time seeing noisy motorcycles. Bikes and pedestrians in the streets are even less visible.
The only way Complete Streets works is when starting a new city. Narrowing existing lanes to make room for bikes and people is engineering death. How are those huge buses going to operate on skinny roads? How about firetrucks who can’t get to a fire because vehicles have nowhere to pull over?
Alderman Buragas questioned why Complete Streets would cost more. Duh.
She should have read the staff response:
http://www.cityblm.org/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=11128
The roads can’t be fixed now without large tax increases and more debt. Bloomington thinks it should be even more expensive so a social experiment can be implemented. Still live in America?
Planners plan, the rest of us have to fund their plans. When the plans don’t work, more plans are needed. Of course, more money is needed too. Start naming the programs implemented by government that didn’t work as promised.
Here’s a secret: If problems were fixed, government employees wouldn’t have jobs. Therefore they won’t be fixed and new problems will be discovered.
This pic was in the packet for last Monday’s meeting:
Looks cool, but impossible to accomplish. The original roads weren’t built with enough room to separate vehicles, bikes, and walkers. Bloomington will just put them all on the same road. It will lead to disaster, not only for your pocketbook, but for the people using it.
The Bloomington Mayor and most of the Council don’t believe you are smart enough to manage your own life and your own transportation. They also don’t understand rain, excessive heat, snow, and ice. We still live in Illinois, not Florida!
Building anything for a tiny minority of residents steals money from everybody else.
Time for a leadership coup!
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The “unreality” of the Boulder, CO. lifestyle works WELL in Boulder, but it’s a college town where old hippies go to die, surrounded by reality! It also don’t work that well there, and MANY of the out of town folks don’t go there BECAUSE of the “crowding”. My one question is, say I need a new air conditioner or refrigerator? Does the delivery guy bring it down the narrow street or drop it at the corner, and I’m on my own from there!
Do we really have a huge number of bicycle riders in Bloomington that need a special roadway? Uppity Normal has them because the mayor just happens to own a bike shop!
We desperately need some of our roads repaired (not just patched) instead of creating something new. Also the city can’t even maintain/clean up brush on parts of the main constitution trail that bikers use. And where is the extra “fuel tax” money going, for more “consultants” ??
There is already multi-million dollar Federally subsidized roadway for bicycles known as The Constition Trail. The number of bicycle riders is probably less than the number of bus riders.
That reminds me, the bus doesn’t drop people off in front of Walmart anymore, at least I saw one today park across the access road. An elderly couple with trouble walking then had to cross the pretty busy road. Another bus dropped a lady at Meier in the middle of the road west of the store. She had to cross in front of the bus.
Those idiots at CT don’t care because they don’t ride the buses. The Main Street corridor is the only one that matters. Who cares if those dependent on bus transportation can’t get to the grocery store safely.
first thing I noticed was the bikes blowing through the “DO NOT CROSS” sign..