Letter: Why does traffic light at 25th and Broadway exist? Can 36th Street be returned to four-lane road?

To the Editor:

A traffic light at 25th and Broadway seems to be an unnecessary impediment to the flow of traffic on Broadway.  This intersection is only one block away from 24th Street, which has a traffic signal.

While traveling Broadway, I and about 15 other vehicles have been stopped at this light while one car on 25th Street is allowed to enter Broadway. This vehicle could have easily approached Broadway from 24th Street, where there is a traffic signal. Many streets have more traffic than 25th Street that do not have traffic signals.  For example, 28th Street appears to have more traffic than 25th Street and does not have a traffic signal. I also question the need for a traffic signal at Sixth and Broadway now that Sixth Street has been blocked off for the new jail. IDOT should do a traffic study on Broadway and eliminate unnecessary traffic signals.

I’m also very disappointed that 36th Street from Melodie Lane to Wismann Lane, a distance of more than one mile, has been downgraded from a four-lane road to only two lanes. As I recall, this downgrade was sold to the public by the Adams County Superintendent of Highways as a safety measure that would make it safer for school buses to turn north on 36th Street on their way to a new school which was to be located near the intersection of Locust Street and North 30th Street. The school never was built, but the citizens of Adams County are left with the street downgrade from four lanes to two lanes. 

Adams County taxpayers paid for a four-lane road. Now they are being denied the use of a four-lane road. This change should never have taken place before the plans for the new school near North 30th and Locust were finalized. The Adams County Superintendent of Highways jumped the gun on this downgrade. 

He was able to get permission from the Adams County Board because he is an engineer and knows more about these matters than any one else. The approval was granted to make the downgrade and re-stripe the road. This change happened almost overnight after approval by the board. The engineer had already let the contract for re-striping before it was approved by the board. I have never seen such swift action by a government entity. Let’s see how quickly they can change it back to four lanes. Let’s see if that change can take place overnight.

We now have new businesses springing up along the section of 36th Street where the road diet is in effect, making it more dangerous for traffic wanting to turn into one of the new businesses.

I would like to find out if the public approves of paying for a four-lane road and only getting two lanes. The idea of a road diet on 36th Street should be re-evaluated and the road returned to the four lanes the taxpayers paid for.

Road diets, such as changing streets from four lanes to two lanes, are sometimes popular with engineers in liberal cities and states like California as an effort to make driving the streets more inconvenient and thus encouraging people to walk or ride their bicycles, thus saving the planet from greenhouse gas.  Engineers claim that road diets make streets safer but that is not true.

Click here to read a story by the National Motorists Association where the negative effects of road diets is discussed.

One of the comments from the story reads: “After the Salt Lake City Transportation Department claimed that putting a road diet on 900 West in Poplar Grove, Utah, would make this road safer and reduce crashes by 19 to 47 percent, crashes went up 200 percent after the road diet was established in late 2017.

Our county engineer is a big proponent of road diets for Quincy. He made an attempt to downgrade 48th Street from Columbus Road to State Street (a distance of 1.33 miles) from four lanes to two lanes.  When I heard about his proposal, where he was already making plans to re-stripe the road, I and others immediately swung into action. After a public meeting, where the idea was soundly defeated, the county engineer dropped his plans for a road diet on 48th Street.

People should organize to fight for their rights as taxpayers. Many people seem to be willing to let the government take actions that are not in their best interest.

E. Joe Churchill
Quincy, Illinois