Gig Harbor Under Seige
This time of year I always get itchy for school to be out
and to escape to Ilwaco. For the last
couple of years we’ve had the added incentive to pack up and leave of an
on-going and never-ending road project.
Yesterday the electronic sign along the road read: “Wollochet road work
begins May 21st.” What year
are they talking about? What I call the
Wollochet Boondoggle has been going on for a two years, heading into the third
summer of road closures, back-ups and headaches. Tucci & Sons are doing well on this
project. Allegedly the project is to be
completed next summer, but a neighbor talked to one of the workers who said
that the entire project, to get out to the Fox Island Bridge, will take another
five years and come by our house. Argh.
And that isn’t the only construction going on in Greater Gig
Harbor. The overpass at Olympic Drive is
being repaired due to an accident on highway 16 having damaged it. They have reduced the traffic flow, but are
not in a rush to get it finished as evenings and weekends are certainly not in
their program.
Because the county thought we weren’t having enough fun with
road equipment and traffic, they are starting another project beginning at the intersection by the over-pass on
Pt. Fosdick and continuing in a circle around to 56th which was just
torn up a couple of years ago.
Of all of these projects the over-pass repair is the only
one that seems necessary. Traffic on Wollochet
gets slow during the afternoon “rush” hours, but it has never been gridlock—at least
not until they started tearing things up.
So when June 21st rolls around I will be more
than ready to head to the coast and our house on Spruce St, even if it is a
main thoroughfare that turns into a highway.
Eighteen wheelers turning toward the dock to get their seafood are noisy
sometimes, but at least we should be able to get to the store without running
the gauntlet of three road constructions!
I won’t start on what they’ve been doing downtown because I
don’t go down there.
1 comment:
Seems like ages since I was in the Harbor, but it sounds frustrating.
Key Center seems quite the town, now that we have one main intersection with a light, and choice of lanes.
I hear more and more traffic, every year, on our one main road to everywhere...and sirens now pierce almost every day through Home. Don't look at the acres of clear-cut, or you would cry. It's a quick way to make a buck in these times, with very relaxed rules as to replanting. More developments...again, with one main road, north to south. The bottleneck in Purdy seems to begin around 2pm now. More roads, more houses, more people...less trees for breathing. One letter to the editor defended clear-cutting by saying, "it's the same way we done it in '47. It was fine then, it's fine now." How long will we look at the future, bent over, with face pointed backwards, or....?
It's hard to get places...but they keep on working to make the places, with no seeming cohesive planning. A lot of money seems to go round and round.
It will be seventeen years, next month, since Matt, Anna and I came out here. I cannot believe the changes in that time, but I also cannot believe the changes in thinking and planning to keep up with these challenging times of balancing absolutely everything...from inner to outer...and all the pathways between.
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