It’s the 2-edged sword: widen Friendly (add a turn lane, kill the trees) and you get progress. A neighbor says, “I really wonder what the progress is in this particular instance.”
Yup, like this gem:
Breaks in the median will be located at Starmount Drive, Keeling Drive, West Kemp Road, Rodman Road, Seven Oaks Drive, Westminster Drive and Greenwood Drive. That means to reach some locations and streets, drivers will have to pass their destination and make a U-turn.
This is just so…annoying…because I had to live through the agony of my kids crossing Friendly on their bikes to visit friends and they’re not fixing that particular issue, it seems (they didn’t mention lights in the article). This is about cars, not neighborhood. (And yes, I do understand the tree-limbs-and-overhead-wires thing.)
Pedestrian safety also will be improved with the work. Sidewalks will be installed along both sides of Friendly Avenue…
I have yet to see the places traffic lights will be installed on Friendly in this highly residential area so people can actually cross the street safely. It seems we are merely being kept on our respective sides more efficiently.
And no bike lanes… sigh.
Sue, another issue with the absence of a light is the difficulty that cars from within the neighborhood sometimes have making a left turn on to Friendly at certain times of the day.
I wonder about sidewalks on Friendly in a neighborhood such as ours. Sidewalks are nice. But aside from those who walk for pleasure and exercise, they will not be heavily used with current patterns of development. Sidewalks tend to be used when there is a destination to which it is realistic or likely that people would walk. There is no commercial or transportation “hub” in our neighborhood to which people would walk.
I have tended to be over-protective of my kids in our neighborhood. When we first moved here, we were told a child on his bicycle had been struck by a car and killed. As you know, cars can move pretty quickly. I can understand what you said about your kids’ crossing Friendly.
Sidewalks are nice inside neighborhoods and on main streets where people take the bus; they do in this set of neighborhoods. People work here and take the bus here and back again yet I didn’t hear anything about building covered bus stop areas for people who stand in the sun and the rain. They might appreciate the on-Friendly sidewalks, but I certainly don’t think we need one from “Guilford College to downtown.”
At certain times of day, I drive out of my way so I don’t have to make a left across Friendly and coming home, trying to make a left onto Kemp West (not “West Kemp” as in the paper) or Westminster is death-defying.
I heard that they put in lights only after enough people have been killed at an intersection (yes, we called). Go figure.
Hey Sue,
I have been protesting the GDOT activity on West Friendly since the conversation started. What a waste of taxpayer money.
I cannot see where the project will make Friendly Ave. any friendlier.
This is not the only (so called) road improvement project that is unfriendly and unsafe for pedestrian and vehicular traffic.
diane davis
Did you see the post on my site at greensboropeerpressure on July 20?
Sue,
Thanks for this note. It makes me sad. What end does all this whacking and chopping serve — and not even to end up with sidewalks to make it safe for people. I am reminded of a poem by Hopkins, though of a rural scene, it evokes similar feelings:
MY aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
All felled, felled, are all felled;
Of a fresh and following folded rank
Not spared, not one
That dandled a sandalled
Shadow that swam or sank
On meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding bank.
O if we but knew what we do
When we delve or hew—
Hack and rack the growing green!
Since country is so tender
To touch, her being só slender,
That, like this sleek and seeing ball
But a prick will make no eye at all,
Where we, even where we mean
To mend her we end her,
When we hew or delve:
After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.
Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve
Strokes of havoc únselve
The sweet especial scene,
Rural scene, a rural scene,
Sweet especial rural scene.