Coming in Second Place Doesn't Make Us a Winner...

...Part One the Portage Avenue Construction Detour chronicles

If you have driven north on Portage Avenue lately hoping to make your way to Cleveland Road, then you should have stopped by my house and said hello. Why is that you might ask?

Here's why...

Because Portage Avenue, being a main north-south artery of the city - busy enough to warrant a brand spankin' new roundabout - now detours directly onto Bergan Street where my house is located.

Mind you our humble, very narrow, two lane residential street, that allows parking on one side of it and also contains 3 blocks of a School Zone (Marquette School) with no posted speed limit signs, did not complain at all that it wasn't completely the first choice as the detour route.


(Look closely at this picture and notice how people in the neighborhood are now parking on their lawns because they are so scared of having their vehicles hit by cars speeding by. And, this house is within feet of the school!)

Originally, the northbound traffic was routed onto Bergan, up 2 blocks through the School Zone, then turned right onto Johnson Street which dead end's at Lathrop, from which the detour continues up onto Bendix. Then suddenly it all changed.

What prompted the change? As far as I can figure, since the scene at the one-story apartment slum (located on the corner where Johnson and Lathrop streets meet) is filled with dirt lawns, broken down cars, drunken skanks, random drug dealer loitering and public intoxication arrests just waiting to happen - I'm guessing city officials or maybe just citizens unfamiliar with the usual suspects of that particular corner, got scared of being stopped there. (I'll try to get a photo posted of this outstanding property that I have dubbed "the perfect example of code enforcement's inability to make any difference in our neighborhood" later today.) And so the route was changed.

The new solution? Keep people on Bergan Street up a few more blocks and then safely route them to Lathrop. And why not?

Until this happened...

... Bergan Street seemed like a fairly decent place (unless you looked closely and discovered that there are no less than seven vacant and/or abandoned houses (and that number isn't made up!) just within the detour portion and that's not counting the 5 others that are up for sale. Keep in mind folks that is all within 4 or 5 blocks!

Well, you might say, the detour had to go SOMEWHERE. My answer is yes, I suppose it did, but couldn't the city have at least posted a few speed limit signs in the School Zone or maybe put a police officer there in the morning/afternoon to make people slow down while kids are walking to/from school? How about the novel idea of AT LEAST a crossing guard at this corner of the school's property? Are any of these things too much to ask?

Here is the morning view of the traffic from the bus-stop directly facing Marquette School field on the corner of Bergan and Brookfield Streets. Now that it's barely light outside at morning school time, the children have even less of a chance that cars will see them.

(It's not only cars, but we also have trucks and semi-trucks coming through as well.....)

Notice the lack of a crossing guard? Not many parents are actually walking their children to this school in the morning. The kids (even small kids- like 2nd graders!) walk there and across this major traffic detour ALONE.... but, that's another story.

This corner is a bus-stop for neighborhood kids that go to other elementary schools, because even though they live across the street or within blocks of Marquette, the school has such a poor reputation, their parents won't send them there. Again, a story for another day....

I suppose that's enough for now! I'm off to call the Street & Traffic departments to ask why there's no speed limit signs in the neighborhood School Zone/Construction Detour area.