To the Editor:
I have a request to make concerning the planning for the unpopular roundabout on the Edgartown Road. To the Oak Bluffs selectmen, can we put a delay on this plan until the community can further discuss what would be best to do, if anything? Can you listen to the concerns of others and simply reconsider your decision?
You would have the support and gratitude of many to simply open the discussion and reconsider. There would be no need to litigate. You would save us, the taxpayers, a lot of money.
Also, I am wondering why the O.B. police do not have up-to-date accident statistics since the implementation of the four-way stop. Could it be that there haven’t been any automobile accidents that resulted in personal injury? No one can recall a single serious accident. It is no longer a safety issue. It is a traffic issue.
However, a single lane, stop free, circular intersection will possibly create new safety issues that do not now exist. Is it really helpful to spend money to take away all stop signage? Can we make a different choice?
Years ago, the Edgartown Road Blinker and two stop signs alone were sufficient. Then came a huge increase in traffic in the nineties, and the Clintons. Our traffic has been in knots every summer since. When it isn’t, you had best be alert to old world road conditions with the vacationing public doing u-turns at Five Corners.
Will they (and we) behave courteously when in the roundabout? Who is going to “educate them,” as one Oak Bluffs selectman suggested, when they are only here for a short time, and hey, there’s a great party nearby, and which way to the beach? Is it a good idea to return to a stop-less intersection? Is it safe?
It’s pretty clear that the Oak Bluffs selectmen created the solution to what was a scary, dangerous intersection with an inexpensive four-way stop and, perplexingly enough, now want to “improve” on the improvement with $1.4 million and still counting, because the plan is “incomplete.”
Where is our common sense?
Marie Laursen
Vineyard Haven