Your Opinion: Prioritize traffic flow

Dear Editor:

Now that the voting is over, maybe Jefferson City can still focus on transforming itself. It should start with basics, traffic flow. Traffic movement is the first impression visitors to our town recognize when visiting.

Personally, I don't think it's positive. First, street parking is allowed too close to intersections without traffic signals. One often cannot see vehicles coming from the left or the right. Driving across an intersection where there is no traffic signal, in many cases, risks everyone's life. Simply painting the curbs yellow for no parking where currently cars park closest to the intersection could solve this.

Second, side street parking is a mess in parts of this city. Allowing on-street parking on both sides of a street is ludicrous when such parking means two oncoming vehicles cannot pass one another because of parked vehicles, creating a game of chicken for both vehicles. Simply placing no parking this side of the street signs on those narrower streets would solve this problem. There, I've already started to transform this city with some yellow paint and a few signs.

Some traffic flow is a joke. Traffic circles are for the purpose of moving traffic in different directions efficiently. The two combined traffic circles on Stadium Boulevard at Menards are confusing and constructed so small that it is easy to veer into the wrong lane.

This location should have had an overpass for vehicles coming from the south to get into Menards. I assume it was constructed this way because it was cheaper than an overpass. Infrastructure should not be done on the cheap; do it right or don't do it at all. It makes us look like hillbillies.

Good job for installing the street light visible timers at McCarty and Broadway. They provide valuable information to both drivers and pedestrians. Could we have more of them at busy intersections?

I've lived in Jefferson City over eight years. I love it here. Let's transform this city up to the quality of a seriously thriving metropolis and get the traffic flow problems fixed first. Just doing that will make a huge impression on incoming visitors to our town.