To the editor:

An article in Saturday’s Journal-World tells us of the new plans for warning beacons at the intersection of Kansas Highway 10 and the East Hills Business Park. This has been a hazard for a long time and is a sterling example of poor planning that seems to permeate the infrastructure of the city/county complex. But why do this when the solution is so painfully simple?

Lower the speed limit approaching the intersection and build a roundabout! Foolish suggestion, you say? Not so! The city is becoming awash with these notorious “traffic-calming devices,” and this would be in line with the current policy of obstructing traffic to control it.

I discovered a few months ago that there is one in Franklin County on Kansas Highway 68 east of Ottawa, right there in the middle of the cornfield. A cornfield roundabout! What could be more appropriate to the state that is, to quote an old stage musical song, “corny as Kansas in August”? These devices seem to be the do-all, end-all solution to imagined modern problems of efficient traffic flow and direction, so why not go whole-hog and extend this planning policy out to this very dangerous intersection? But be careful on that one down in Franklin County: I was going to Osawatomie, and ended up in Paola.

Love those traffic-calming devices!

Fred R. Whitehead Jr.,

Lawrence