Lloyd Gilman
Island Forum

The City Council has utter disregard for popular will. It treats Mercer Island citizens as dummies. Consider the Council’s plan to revise Island Crest Way in the neighborhood of Merrimount. The plan reduces the number of lanes from four to only three. Nevermind that previous study recommended simply installing a traffic signal.

Under consideration for two years, the plan has been so politically risky as to need a citizens committee to lend it acceptance. Thus, citizen “involvement” was to result from the recommendation of an appointed committee. But instead, the Council mandated an agenda. Cost, safety and biking were the agenda. Honesty was not.

The committee was seeded with special interests and partisans. One member, a resident on West Mercer Way, was anxious to have safe crossing for the family’s children, who will be driving to high school. Another member resides on a corner at the intersection. Good citizens, but each with isolated special interests. And there were other special interests. The city’s consulting firm was especially supportive of the city plan. So, too, were the Councilmen.

The simple and safest revision is to install a signal in the intersection. At the outset, alteration to the intersection had to be made, the city claims, for safety and due to liability and increased premiums threatened by its insurer. But isn’t the city a member of a group of self-insured cities? Wouldn’t a temporary four-way, center-of-intersection, blinking, battery-operated, boulevard stop have been immediately safe and cost effective? But that slippery slope could lead to a traffic signal. Rather, encumbering the slope to the intersection by restricted use favored the plan. A temporary, unacceptable alteration requires roadwork. Back to the plan.

The city’s consultant provided “straw men” alternatives to draw things out and even made the excuse that idling exhaust emissions at a signal would defeat the city’s efforts to reduce its carbon footprint. Corner resident, listen up.

The best solution’s cost is out of bounds for the Councilmen. The city’s means of affording the best was denied on the basis of the recession and the housing market: there being less future revenue due to reduced property taxes. In the last 38 years, there have been five recessions, and not one reduction in property taxes. Anyway, roadwork would be part of a scheduled repaving budget. In the last 35 years, Island Crest Way was repaved once, just recently.

The plan requires bike lanes to be shared with autos, but are hardly wide enough for that. Lanes to nowhere, from nowhere, just like the bike lanes on S.E. 71st Street on the one short block at the Country Club. Why require bike lanes? For a biker’s Disney-like thrill? Certainly not for the ambiance — at least for re-curbing the roadway.

The contention that a three-lane configuration is safe is specious. Already, the reduction from four lanes to three at Merrimount has an adverse effect as far south as the mailbox near Island Park Elementary. There, drivers conditioned to avoid the center lane crowd the northbound curb lane. A slight error in judging traffic begs for an accident there.

Vehicle throughput would be adversely affected. Southbound vehicles at S.E. 40th, queued for their turn, are mostly in the center lane. More vehicles in one lane does not equate to throughput.

The Council’s motivation is self-serving. Perhaps they curry the favor of a few small constituencies. Perhaps a lengthy project favors re-election. That shouldn’t outweigh the values of motorists who routinely travel the road and who depend on it for ready access to the North end or off-Island.

The destruction of Island Crest, albeit the Council’s approved plan and its consultant’s paycheck, is not cost effective. It is unsafe and is without consideration of the popular will.”

Lloyd Gilman has lived on the South end for over 30 years with his wife, Elizabeth. They raised three daughters, had two horses and boarded more “when the world was flat and before The Lakes.”