To the editor:

Lawrence has a traffic problem. Only two streets fully traverse the city east and west, Sixth and 23rd streets. North to south, we also have only two crosstown streets, Iowa and Kasold. All of us who love this city tolerate this as a necessary inconvenience for having a campus of world class beauty situated in the center of our road grid. What is intolerable are the number of apparent self-imposed traffic jams.

Traffic cones around street projects are often placed weeks and sometimes a month or more prior to the beginning of any actual work serving only to create more choke points on our limited crosstown streets (see south Iowa). Then there was the brilliant idea to squeeze one of the most congested portions of Ninth Street down to two lanes. and without citizen complaints, city fathers likely would have imposed this two lane configuration on Kasold. Finally, we sure seem to have too many traffic lights, and, if they are synced, it frequently seems as though their primary goal is to ensure that all of us have to stop at the majority of the lights. I wonder how much unnecessary exhaust pollution and wasted people time results from these approaches to traffic management.

OK, rant over, but I do think we can do better.