Tuesday, December 8, 2009

NIMBY Experiment

Two years ago Amherst spent $8,000 on temporary speed cushions for Lincoln Avenue as an "experiment in traffic calming", and they were about as effective as whistling Dixie in slowing traffic from superhighway Rt. 9 over to Umass, the number one employer in the Valley.

Then in September the town placed concrete barricades to outright ban traffic from the final few hundred yards to Umass, the number one employer in the Valley. The response to that "experiment" was almost unanimously negative--to the point of outright nasty.

And unlike snarky cowardly Anon commenters on blogs, these folks (over 100) actually identified themselves.

So I'm a tiny bit surprised Phil Jackson--lead architect of all things Lincoln Avenue--showed up at the Select Board meeting to request official results of the most recent "experiment" that went as awry as anything Dr. Frankenstein created.



Outraged voices

12 comments:

ur-an-a-hole said...

Larry, you used to require login to post but YOU CHANGED IT to allow anonymous comments. It is entirely within YOUR CONTROL to allow or disallow anonymous comments. Why are you such an a-hole to blame others for a policy you decided?

Larry Kelley said...

Glad you know who I'm talking about.

Anonymous said...

fck phil jerkson

Anonymous said...

How about we raise $ for the schools and help out Mr. Jackson...
by letting his neighbors and he pay for the establishment of their private community in the center of town.

We need to at least assess them the $8000 which is,as far as I know, a chunk of the salary of many paras required to work with kids in the schools......

Anonymous said...

oh, and one more thing: when the YES override signs go up on Lincoln Ave...

I have one question: when will the waste stop?

Joel said...

I work at UMass and I drive on Lincoln to get to my job. Where exactly do the Lincoln Ave. folks imagine we'll go during a snow emergency? I'm sure it wouldn't affect traffic to cut off one of the major exit routes in a storm. No, no problem with that.

Of course, maybe Phil can put us up for the night.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

The guy is one, Larry...

Larry Kelley said...

Thought that was spam.

And I really, really don't like that word.

Anonymous said...

Not any worse than "prick", Larry.

Oh wait, don't want to upset the lesbians... Sorry.

Larry Kelley said...

Yeah, that's much better. Nitwit.

Ed said...

Lincoln Avenue was laid out in 1887 (note the use of Civil War hero, Lincoln, McQuellian, etc.).

It was THE INTENDED road to UMass, Lincoln Avenue used to continue all the way to the Grad Tower, the Student Union Circle was off Lincoln and it always was intended to be the main road to UMass from the south.

And it is the AMHERST RESIDENTS who are most affected by any restriction on it. There is a vast stretch of developed middle class homes that really need to access campus via Lincoln.

And if we want to talk global warming, what about all the extra pollution as people have to go around? I say let UMass take Lincoln Avenue by emminent domain and then let them have 99 year leases and deal with UM as a landlord...