Submitted by Marjorie Klise
Our first fall monthly meeting of the neighborhood organization started out calmly enough. We praised an amazing neighbor for generous work on behalf of all of us, we learned about new ways to communicate neighborhood news and information, and we welcomed representatives of the police department who do such a good job of providing safety and security for all of us……
…..but then, it seemed to me, to all go NIMBY on a very small scale. Some residents sense an increase of traffic on their street. Some resented speeders on their street. Others had to change their routines slightly to avoid perceived congestion.
All of these are serious concerns and needed to be handled by the very generous members of city staff who came, in the evening, to answer our questions and update us on all things traffic. They listened and told us their plans. But we soon turned to suggestions of how we could solve these problems by sending them to other streets, to become other people’s problems.
I think we are better than that. We know, certainly, if a driver can’t come down my street he/she will drive down someone else’s street. If I can’t wait an extra minute at a traffic signal then I can’t blame another driver for cutting thru residential streets because of his/her busy schedule. And if I don’t slow my speed, we can’t ask others to ease up to 20 mph.
We have had quite an upheaval with intersection construction, traffic delays, new speed limits, narrowed lanes and it will take some adjustment and tweaking. However as we make these adjustments I trust that we will consider that this is our neighborhood, these are our streets and we live in an inner city of commerce and education and residency where we work to make life better for us all!