How surprised I was to see a touchy feel-good picture in the local media with a lot of people smiling over the completion of The Mount Baker Road project. The problem is that the project is not complete. Just a few days ago I asked Russ Harvey when the speed limit will return to normal. His answer was that they are not done, yet there he is cutting the ribbon.
I come from a culture that strives for excellence. A culture that does not pretend things are better than they are. A culture that does not play fast and loose with the language. Completed is completed, not 98%. The corners have washed out and they do not know what to do about it. The speed limit is 25 miles per hour when it should be 40 on a road that wide.
I won’t burden you with the design problems which were numerous.
The county staff, by any measure, are making big money and if their salaries were half it might be easier to swallow mediocre work. We are only pretending to get big results. I urge you readers to not shoot me the messenger, but consider the possibility that your tax dollars are not being wisely spent.
For two generations we have been telling kids that whatever they do is great, when in most cases it wasn’t. Too many of these “kids” are now county employees.
We have devolved into a mediocre culture with the consequence being that America is not the greatest country on earth anymore and that is reflected in the “The Emperor Has No Clothes” syndrome and the sheer number of high tech foreign workers we “import”.
The debacle in DC where some Republicans are saying default wouldn’t be that bad is more of the same.
Harvey Aldort
Those are very broad conclusions about our country and its future, it seems to me, from a road that is now open, yet not scheduled for completion until next year.
Respectfully disagree: the speed limit on that road should NOT be 40mph. Granted, people will probably be tempted by all that big wide road into exceeding the (eventual)35mph speed limit, but I hope they don’t. The County promised those of us who live on that section of Mt. Baker Road that the speed limit would not go up. The wider shoulders are there to make it easier for cars & bicycles to avoid each other, not so the cars can go even faster.
This is not Seattle, it is not New York, and people ought to maybe just slow down.
As to the speed limit it is 40 miles an hour from Fowlers corner into town. Most major roads on San Juan Island that are this wide are 40 miles an hour. Road planners have some sort of cheat sheet as to what the speed limit should based on the width and sight clearances. I commiserate with you living there but the speed should be the County standard. This is a bypass. I believe that 40% of the traffic are trucks. Time is money.
David I did not understand your point. My point was that completed is completed not 98%. I noticed that the corners that washed out were being worked on today.
FYI: County engineers assured us that Mt. Baker Road was designed (based on sight distances etc) for 35mph travel, not the faster speed you would prefer.