By Jeff Bender Santa Monica
Just when I thought the city’s brain trust was finished wasting our money by building curbs in the middle of the streets I noticed that they’re at it again. This time they’ve decided to “improve” the traffic situation at Cloverfield and Pico boulevards, an intersection many of us lowly southside residents use to get to the I-10. What could possibly help traffic more than taking up a lane with a curbed island?
Not only do these useless curbs in the roads make traffic worse (and cost how many thousands of tax dollars?), you can forget about trying to ride your bike on a street with them (26th, Montana, Wilshire). How unsafe, and unnerving, it is to cycle when Big Blue buses and Hummer-driving soccer moms are swerving over to the right to avoid the curbs in the middle of the road.
A bike-friendly city, yeah right. On the bright side, in the future when we’re stuck in the bumper-to-bumper traffic on Cloverfield we’ll have a lovely new bum campground (oops, I mean skate park) to look at.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 30, 2004. Read the original PDF.