Couple of things
- Hillary compares me to Barack Obama and admits she missed me at work. I'm genuinely touched.
- Since it's geographically near him, I wonder if Patrick Armstrong has anything to say about Brunswick's mayor striking rich on Deal or No Deal.
- The Athens-Clarke County Commission is about to get an earful over converting Hawthorne Avenue back to four lanes. I don't necessarily know if it will help business as the Athens Area Chamber of Commerce claims, but I do know it will help traffic. As that's the route I typically take driving home from work, it's a friggin' nightmare. It's so bad, particularly during the lunch hour, that traffic extends all the way back to Atlanta Highway. And I don't know if bike lanes are really that necessary on that stretch of road. Other places - like Oglethorpe feeding into Prince Avenue - sure, but I rarely see bikers on Hawthorne Avenue.
- Buddy, he seems to be doing a bang-up job on his own.
- I'd still like you to check out my conversation with Athens-Clarke County Commissioner Alice Kinman. It's refreshing to have an elected official speak so openly and honestly about the issues.
- Since it's geographically near him, I wonder if Patrick Armstrong has anything to say about Brunswick's mayor striking rich on Deal or No Deal.
- The Athens-Clarke County Commission is about to get an earful over converting Hawthorne Avenue back to four lanes. I don't necessarily know if it will help business as the Athens Area Chamber of Commerce claims, but I do know it will help traffic. As that's the route I typically take driving home from work, it's a friggin' nightmare. It's so bad, particularly during the lunch hour, that traffic extends all the way back to Atlanta Highway. And I don't know if bike lanes are really that necessary on that stretch of road. Other places - like Oglethorpe feeding into Prince Avenue - sure, but I rarely see bikers on Hawthorne Avenue.
- Buddy, he seems to be doing a bang-up job on his own.
- I'd still like you to check out my conversation with Athens-Clarke County Commissioner Alice Kinman. It's refreshing to have an elected official speak so openly and honestly about the issues.
posted by Jmac at 7:12 AM
3 Comments:
I've been using Hawthorne for my daily commute - sometimes 6 times per day - for over 15 years. The 3-laning has not had a significant impact on the traffic problems. People who keep repeating that seem to have a very short and selective memory - it was almost just as bad with 4-lanes. The biggest difference is that there are just more people in Athens, now. I cannot support the Atlanta mind-set of trying to build more lanes to relieve traffic congestion because that basically never works for more than a year or two and then it's back to being just as bad as ever.
The Chamber cannot effectively lobby for anything in this town. They are toast.
The business owners on Hawthorne are not suffering from the 3-laning in any way. They are saying that just because they: 1) want to sell right-of-way; 2) they hate bike-lanes so they're trying to use that as an excuse; 3) their businesses are basically shit-boxes and they won't do anything to clean them up.
It all boils down to the fact that there isn't enough real estate there to have a safe 4-lane road under any circumstances. Of course, the usual commissioners don't care about safety because their constituents don't care about safety since, as we all know, it's only "other people" who have accidents.
While I agree with you that I find it a stretch to connect suffering businesses to the three-laning of Hawthorne, your own argument suggests it's appropriate to four-lane the road rather than preserve a three-lane one.
If you admit we have more people coming into Athens-Clarke County and that is the real reason for the increased traffic - and many of these new people are using Hawthorne for commutes - wouldn't it make sense to change the road to better accommodate the increased flow of traffic?
Dude, when Mayor Thompson (who is nearly beloved down here, and he's been in office like, three weeks. 64% of the vote was huge.) got on that show, they put up a big screen TV at one of the local high school auditoriums and at the Ritz Theatre in downtown Brunswick.
He says he's going to donate most of the money to charity. He's pretty good at keeping his word, too. To ensure a local ordinance was followed about trimming ancient oak trees, he went around with the crews and had them use the width of his wrist for a measuring tool.
If this cat spends two terms as Mayor of Brunswick and gets everything done that he says he's gonna, this place may look like a wierd cross between Athens & Santa Barbara.
They could just change the name to 'Paradise City.'
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