Our Bypass Sucks
At first.. I was in love with the new bypass, and you know why? There were two reasons:
- I caught every light and went from before the Hospital right to Sears on the other side in about 3 minutes. WOW!
- PEI drivers do not know they are supposed to drive on the right side of a two lane highway, so I drove in the inside lane and had a clear way the whole way! Sweet!
This however, has changed. Now it seems that every time I head to my folks place (I live in Stratford and they live in Winsloe), I catch every freaking light and it seems to take FOREVER to get there.
Even Google Doesn't Take The New ByPass (and Google is damn smart!)
Tonight actually we discussed this at length around the “wise table” in which myself, my father and two family friends discussed the new bypass. A few interesting points were brought up during my visit and I thought I’d write them down.
Apparentely, the City of Charlottetown has no idea what ‘synchronizing lights’ means. To me, it seems fairly obvious.. when you start on the road and reach a red light.. when it turns green – if going the speed limit – all the other lights on the road will be green when you get to it. Therefore not having to start and stop a million times draining fuel and pissing people (like me) off.
The funny part is, that’s not what our councilors think. They believe (from what I’ve been told) that ‘synchronizing lights’ means that they leave the lights on longer depending on the time of day.. ie: busy times one way = longer green lights. I like that idea too – just as I like the sensors when you approach a light in the middle of the night and it turns almost instantly. However, that isn’t synchronizing.
So it seems that once again our city councillours are more interested in booking their Disney vacation packages instead of really thinking things through.
I mean, how much forward thinking would it have taken to know that this bypass isn’t going to work that well unless you ELIMINATE the lights in the first place (ever heard of an over-pass? They have lots of those off the Island… ). Anyhow, it seems the city has grown around the highway so much lately that to do that now would be almost impossible.. do you really think that this highway is going to be useful in 10 years time? Beh.. not even.
So fix the lights Charlottetown.. Hell, it wouldn’t even be that hard.. all you have to do is do a few test runs and mark how long it takes to get to the lights.. and set them on timers.. geez.
