To the editor:

Who is managing the city’s “traffic imagineering department”? Who is responsible to the public for the actions of this seemingly distressed city department?

Let’s look at the extension east of the “new” 31st Street. A four-lane street is diverted into two one-lane roads (with plenty of wide sidewalks on both sides that go nowhere). I guess this is an example of the city’s new politically popular notion of “road diets” (read “road obstruction” for those horrible “fossil-fueled vehicles”).

Let’s look at the “new” intersection of Haskell Avenue and the “new” 31st Street. There is a fork in the road going south, the left lane going to a traffic light. (I thought that traffic lights and stop signs were “verboten” in the new era of road excellence in Lawrence.) The right lane, (which you will miss if you are not aware; there is no signage) goes to another no-no: a “stop sign intersection.” I wonder why they did not find a way to drop two or three of those politically popular European fad  “roundabouts” into this mix. It seems they missed another great chance to obstruct fossil-fuel traffic here.

You have to wonder. It seems that road planning in Lawrence is accomplished by someone tossing wet spaghetti at a road map.