To the editor:

Our city, county and state governments have done a disservice to the residents of Lawrence and all of Douglas County by letting construction of the South Lawrence Trafficway ground to a halt. Twenty-third Street has become a major bottleneck during much of the day, forcing east-west traffic onto side streets and through residential neighborhoods that were never designed to handle this kind of traffic load.

These are areas where our children go to school and play. Around 5:30 p.m. each day during school season, westbound traffic on 19th Street can reach five blocks long at the Naismith light, while the stretch between Kentucky and Louisiana is fast approaching total gridlock. These are extremely unsafe traffic patterns around two of our city’s public schools.

The real resolution to our traffic problems lies not in the Band-Aid approach of constructing more traffic circles, but in the resolution of the real problem: diverting east-west traffic onto a completed South Lawrence Trafficway. When intransigence and incompetence combine to bring the most important road construction in Douglas County to a standstill, maybe it’s time for a real leader to stand up, realize that wherever it is built, someone is going to be unhappy, and get this important project moving again.

Don Whiteley,

Lawrence