By Scott Sullivan
Editor
Roundabout
Douglas, deluged with more WTF?’s than praise, punted fast on its 2015 Blue Star Highway splitting.
The baby cutting divvied 3 car and truck lanes — from the Kalamazoo River bridge south to Center Street — into now 2 motorized + 1 for bicyclists, runners, walkers, schoolkids, elders pushing strollers, self-propelled (although some snuck in on with scooters …). Solomon coudn’t have done it better, concumbines be damned.
The City of the Village had created, thus was confronted with, more than a mite of bafflement, agitation and bemusement at its latest BS Corridor traffic-calming measure.
Behind it were more bi- and tri-furcations: multiple master plans (harbor, zoning, Tri-Community …), steering committees, task forces, advisory groups, a myriad of mirror managers, planner/zoners, commissions, contractors, engineers, lawyers … a labyrinth with no end.
Drivers, forewarned or not, caromed tires off island curb concrete barriers, leaving on them black rubber marks like runes. Then new cutaway crossings east towards downtown or west to:
- Washington Street, now passable after 2019-21 flooding, west under the bridge a popular fishing spot and once-more dry Swing Bridge boardwalk;
- Palazzollo’s stationary gelataria;
- Sharp right and downhill to the Red Dock bar/café, music and poetry readings and, if the gate’s not barred, Safe Harbor Tower Marine with heavy dredging gear and where helicopter may still land.
- St. Peter’s Catholic Church;
- The Pines Motor Lodge, green-painted with plastic flamingos sentinels;
- The southwest BS-Center Street corner Shell station. Pull in, repair tires and/or dented rims; and
- East/West Center …
- Adding to lane-crossing cutaway confusion were green-painted asphalt strips that resembled too-fast up or downhill mini-golf putting greens. These, in fact, are popular in California, Philadelphia, Virginia, nationwide though especially in urban areas; the Netherlands paints theirs red, but tomorrow lands slow in these parts for some.
A simple, one-sign explanation of this enhanced traffic flow was needed. Douglas designers at that time were more than up to the challenge. A reflective yellow diamond popped up at the C of V’s south entry showing black icons signifying: - Now just 2 car or truck arrows north-south;
- To their west (right when southbound) a bumper icon (upside-down bullet or narrow African mask shaped) + coup de gras: a bent-over, stick-figure human on 2-wheel bike, pointed straight up. Sky-bound?
It was idiot-proof. Even I couldn’t make it out. Local Facebook mogul John Vanderbeek posted a picture of this sign, ringed nights by flashing red lights, next to a simple inscription: This is art.
Down it came soon after. Locals have since become used, or resigned themselves, to this configuration, which Douglas nonetheless keeps tweaking. Stay tuned to public meetings or on these pages.
Up next: Saugatuck Township, under advisement of and construction by the Allegan County Road Commission, converting what was called “Crash Corner” — Blue Star at Old Allegan (east in the township)/Allegan (west in the city) roads after a rash of wrecks there two years ago into a roundabout.
These have been standard in the United Kingdom since 1966 (remember the Yes song “Roundabout”? The Beatles’ “Penny Lane”? Behind the shelter in the middle of a roundabout/A pretty nurse is selling poppies from a tray …
I encountered my first in Ann Arbor maybe 10 years ago, now semi-daily in Grand Rapids. Give them time, locals; you’ll get used to them. Are they driver error-proof? Name me one thing that is.
The township Aug. 14 OK’d $3,500 for Viridis Design Group to prepare landscaping there, having earlier agreed to spending $150,000 to raise grading on east and west sides of Blue Star so Blue Star Trail engineers need not budget nor build higher maintenance cost wood bridges to traverse those gullies.
Board members voiced a laundry list of decorative centerpieces (a “Saugatuck Township” sign, trustee Stacey Aldrich suggested) plus more-grounded ideas (a design that would be aesthetically pleasing year-round, said clerk Becky Israels. All agreed they would like to see irrigation included in the plan.
I’ll miss pretty misses selling poppies from a tray, but perhaps opportunities linger for hanging personal and political laundry there.