Attend open meeting on Island Crest traffic light

I was one of the members of the Island Crest Way Citizen Panel, which was set up to review the options for reconfiguring Island Crest Way. I urge all of you interested in this very important matter for our community to attend the open meeting at the Community Center at Mercer View on Tuesday, March 3, from 6 to 8 p.m., to discuss the Island Crest Way issue. Ignoring the previous outpouring of citizen disapproval of narrowing Mercer Island’s main arterial, the panel has instead voted to reduce Island Crest Way to two lanes, with a center turn lane, south of the Merrimount intersection.

February 24, 2009 6:32 pm

I was one of the members of the Island Crest Way Citizen Panel, which was set up to review the options for reconfiguring Island Crest Way. I urge all of you interested in this very important matter for our community to attend the open meeting at the Community Center at Mercer View on Tuesday, March 3, from 6 to 8 p.m., to discuss the Island Crest Way issue. Ignoring the previous outpouring of citizen disapproval of narrowing Mercer Island’s main arterial, the panel has instead voted to reduce Island Crest Way to two lanes, with a center turn lane, south of the Merrimount intersection.

Although the panel’s ostensible, overriding goal was to make the Merrimount intersection safer, it has chosen instead to focus on a “road diet” which will result in minimally slowing traffic on Island Crest Way.

Besides making Merrimount no safer than previously, and ensuring that traffic on Island Crest Way will move no more quickly, the panel’s recommendation will also not make 44th Street more accessible — and all for a cost of nearly $500,000.

Eva Zemplenyi