Plan ahead

To the editor:

The Jan. 12 Journal-World editorial noted than a South Lawrence Trafficway interchange at Bob Billings Parkway “probably is needed” and “would provide an important access point to Kansas University,” all of which may be true, but the interchange is the cart before the horse. I urge (and have been urging for 25 or so years) the city traffic planners and the university planners, when they are making grandiose plans for the west end of Bob Billings Parkway, to look also at its east end, where Bob Billings Parkway reverts to plain old two-lane 15th Street.

Ask yourselves: How much sense does it make to bring even more traffic on four lanes and “transition” it into two lanes at the Malott Gateway (aka Malott Squeeze Chute)? Before you invite more traffic in, you must have a place for it to go; the sensible outlet would be created by making 15th Street four lanes east of Iowa, joining with a four-lane Naismith Drive both north and south of 15th Street. Good planners plan ahead — even beyond the next fiscal cycle.