Roundabouts are simply a bad idea

It is time once again to don my Snuggie and sandwich board, taking to the streets to protest Sandpoint planning shortsightedness.

Somewhere in the past, Sandpoint’s favorite “one-tune-Tonies” at J.U.B. Engineers opened their file cabinet drawer of traffic planning, chased away the moths and saw a goose egg. Laying the egg in the middle of Boyer and Larch began their fixation on roundabouts and is their solution no matter what the problem is. Hopefully they will never consult on the Long Bridge or we will be spiraling across the lake.

Now they want to install one at Boyer and Schweitzer Cutoff. Huh? Sure, they held a rodeo in a parking lot to show that trucks can fit, but what about a real life 14x70 mobile home going up Baldy? A roundabout at that intersection is Sandpoint’s de facto rezoning of that whole area of the county and binds up emergency response vehicles from the Bonner County Sheriff’s Office.

A better solution is a simple free right-hand turn lane off of northbound Boyer onto Schweitzer Cutoff. Take the saved money and put it toward a new two-lane bridge beside the existing one and make the cutoff between Boyer and Highway 95 a four-lane road. No one would have to stop except left-turning traffic. It also alleviates the traffic storage problem at the Highway 95 light which is a lot of the problem.

Since that part of the project is in Ponderay, maybe the whole project should be turned over to forward-thinking Ponderay instead of the “short-sighted-Sals” anti-business bunch in Sandpoint.

HERB WIENS

Sandpoint