The Fort Wayne Board of Public Works on Wednesday approved an agreement with the state that will allow the city to move ahead with a plan to replace 57 pedestrian crossing signals downtown with “countdown” signals. Instead of a walk or don't-walk signal, the new signals will display, like a countdown, the number of seconds left to cross the street.
I guess that's progress, but I suspect having to decide several times on one walk whether, say, 10 seconds is enough time to cross the street or not will make nervous wrecks out of some people. Anybody remember the "scramble light" at Wayne and Calhoun, by the way? Wait, wait, wait, wait, then all the pedestrians got to
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I haven't thought about that in years. That was so much fun, especially at Christmas when it really got hectic--of course that was when there were still department stores downtown.
Even though the city is only on the hook for 10%, the 150k cost is being bourne by your tax dollars all the same, just coming out of a different pocket.
Now imagine how many cities, towns, and municipalities are getting the same thing all across the country.
Was this new technology proposed due to an uptick in pedestrians getting mowed over at crosswalks? If so I hadn't read or heard about the new danger. More likely somebody who makes the signs has a brother in law in a congressional district somewhere.....
This is just one tiny example, when added up around the nation results in gazillions of dollars unnecessarily spent AGAIN while all we EVER hear is we can't cut any waste out of the government budgets...
I agree with Tim 100%. Since my incident with FWPD, I am not nearly as nimble on my feet as I once was. With medication, the aggravation of my service connected injuries and the fact my wife now walks three times faster than I can, I like the idea of a count down, but I do not support replacing good lights with these new ones.
If I get to a corner and the walk icon is still white, I cross. If not I stay on the curb. Sure, it takes me longer to walk down town, but I cannot afford another blow to the head or a twenty minute unconscious period again.
In fact the other new lights with no green, just red and yellow with blinking will be totally misunderstood by all the
It makes as much sense as New York re-doing every dam* traffic sign in the city per a federal mandate to change the font at a taxpayer cost of $27.5 million!
Was there an uptick in accidents because motorists couldn't read the "all caps" signs in use for decades? Nope, the feds commissioned a study that determined the new font is easier to read.....that's all it took.
Now again, take this "mandate" and multiply it by all the cities in the U.S. the feds deem in need and you've got GAZILLIONS AGAIN to fix a problem that doesn't exist.
The amount of money spent on abslutely wasteful and unnecessary s^#t is staggering, and your Congress approves ALL of them.
When your politicians tell you we can't cut budgets, think of things like these, they are just the tip of the iceberg. There is enough waste and fraud in our federal budgets that could be cut that we wouldn't need not raise taxes for decades.
Here's another little taxpayer tidbit that should freak everybody out, the staff alone for the 3rd congressional district (Souders old office) is over $1,000,000.00 a year. That's for staff salaries alone not including the Congressman or offices, or paperclips or cell phones or car leases, or airfare, etc etc etc....
And you tell me we can't cut anything??????
I heard Stuzman say he was a part time worker for Souder and was Hayhurst stated he was paid $100K for that part time position. $1 million does not go very far paying for that type of help.
I wonder if they will now replace every incandescent bulb in used with a new compact fluorescent bulb before their useful life is up. This will be a big boom for Chinese companies.