Update to the update:
I’m getting reader suggestions for limiting traffic from the university side of this intersection via signage or a permanent end to travel as an alternative to junking the gateway.
As you can see below, I’d forget about the gateway before I’d delay a pedestrian solution. I’m not concerned about that proposal riling people. (One can guess that I’m not much worried about that risk.)
If there’s a much easier solution, then that’s surely preferable.
Delay is the worst choice of all.
The disparity in city management’s urgency about this project and others is noteworthy.
A reader wrote in concerning yesterday’s post, How Long Does It Take a Whitewater, Wisconsin Bureaucrat to Screw in a Traffic Light?
He wrote with a fair question: What would I suggest? I’ll list remarks and suggestions immediately below.
Bureaucrats and Daily Responsibility. In my post, in both the title and text, I was intentional in mentioning Whitewater’s bureaucrats, those who are daily paid to manage the city. I see a significant difference between elected members of Council who meet periodically and those who are paid for conventional, full-time work for the city.
It’s not a small distinction — those working full-time to trouble-shoot, solve problems, and spot difficulties are the ones who bear principal responsibility for a delay like this. Elected politicians who work full-time jobs or with other full-time duties cannot be expected to be involved in the day-to-day management of this project.
Full-time bureaucrats, like Whitewater’s city manager, her director of public works, or consultants who are well-paid to see and flag problems, bear the principal responsibility for delays like this. When they speak only after a Common Council vote, and then only in vague terms, they ill-serve residents of the city.
Those who are paid for full-time management, or those compensated consultants who are paid to assess construction requirements and timelines, are the ones about whom I am most concerned.
These men were quick to declare in the press how easy this would be, as I quoted from their own words.
True Monuments. In his remarks from his weekly report of April 30th, the city manager writes that “Due primarily to a need to move the historic gateway and entrance walls to the UW-Whitewater campus at the Whiton Street entrance as an integral part of the project, the construction of the long planned improvements to the Main and Whiton Street intersection will now be delayed until next spring.”
Here’s a suggestion, about which I am entirely sincere — abandon the stonework, discard it entirely, and install the traffic signal without regard to the gateway. No historic past should be allowed to trump or delay present human needs.
Any city or university bureaucrat who cares more about these stones than about people in town is gravely misguided.
Let me remind these would-be guardians of the past that a more recent past involved more than aesthetics — someone was struck at this intersection.
That the city manager writes about the need to preserve the gateway over human safety does not redound to his credit; it’s a shameful lack of priority. A shallow and middle-brow deference to this gateway over human need is both risible and wrong.
When there was concern last year about our former tree commission, the city manager insisted that he would not tolerate rudeness toward city workers. He should show at least the same energy on behalf of the safety of common pedestrians.
There was much concern over how tree branches might, just might, impede rapid travel of emergency vehicles through automated intersections. No one could show proof of an actual harm, but the mere possibility was raised, by more than one person.
Well, the significance of this traffic signal is no mere possibility. Whitewater already knows that traffic does impede pedestrians across Main — we know this because there have been actual, not possible, injuries.
If there should be a single administrator in the university insisting for the preservation of the gateway over a rapid installation of the traffic signal, then I would suggest that he may not have been at the university long enough. It’s a school for people in the present, not for monuments to those from the past.
If anyone would fight to preserve the gateway over the rapid installation of the traffic signal, including through a lawsuit, let them try. That’s a challenge that a decent group would welcome — let someone argue for stones over people. That’s a claim worth resisting, resisting confidently and zealously.
A traffic signal, installed promptly, would be its own monument, to the legitimate needs of the present. The steel and aluminum of a signal would be more beautiful than any stone gateway. This is true in the deepest way, just as a small & humble church will always be more beautiful than Rome’s ancient Colosseum.
A plaque could be applied to the new signal, to reflect the right priorities for our city, as confirmation of Whitewater as a truly worthy place:
THIS SIGNAL IS A MONUMENT OF OUR DEDICATION TO PUBLIC SAFETY
CONCERN FOR OUR FELLOW CITIZENS IS OUR FINEST ART
RESPECT FOR THEIR BASIC WELL-BEING IS OUR MOST ADMIRABLE DESIGN
Even without the plaque, our deeper meaning would be clear.
True Accountability. If it should be true that this is a matter primarily of the regulations affecting the gateway — as the city manager’s own words contend — then why was this not seen by the city’s manager, its director of public works, or its consultant?
The gateway did not magically appear. Either those with daily responsibility for this project have not assessed the risks and impediments properly, or have not candidly shared those risks already known to them. Either way, they have failed the pedestrians of the city.
They have no need to mention problems beyond the city limits. The only problem here is not acknowledging lack of foresight within our city limits.
Why not admit as much? Why is that so hard? The bureaucrats of this city should look to themselves.
This project won’t attract cameras and cheerleading publicity as the taxpayer-funded, multi-million dollar Innovation Center will. It won’t offer a chance for bureaucrats to spend millions and feel like wheeler-dealers. There will be no opportunity for flowery talk about the future, progress, dynamism, synergies, whatever.
There will, instead, be something much better. Setting aside superficial concerns and impediments, and by embracing a worthy goal — we will accomplish the simple task of advancing public safety.
That should be the only history that matters.