Bicycles won’t solve area’s traffic woes

After reading your article on Mayor Jeri Muoio’s bicycle adoration, and trying to emulate Paris, I did a little research on it. The place she apparently idolizes has had its own problems trying to increase bicycle and pedestrian traffic. Whenever they try to change patterns, it backfires on them.

Here’s a tidbit (from CityLab) on shutting down the bottom tier of the Seine embankment:

“It’s rush hour in Paris, and here on the banks of the Seine during an early March evening, it’s easy to see why drivers are grumpy.

“Last September, the lower quays of central Paris’s two-tiered Seine embankment closed to all motorized vehicles, limiting drivers of the double-decked waterfront highway to the upper quay. Now, at 6 p.m., the upper quay is packed with cars creeping home to the suburbs — still moving but in a viscous molasses-like flow rather than a steady stream. Meanwhile, the lower quays, now reserved for bicycles and pedestrians, are all but empty, with just a cyclist here, a skater there. The landscaping that will eventually turn them into a lush succession of lawns, copses, and flowerbeds is only beginning to emerge, so the quayside still looks like a road — a road you can’t drive on.

“If the tired suburbanites trapped in traffic above protest that their journey home is getting longer to make space for the odd Rollerblader, right now, it’s hard to blame them.”

Maybe this is her intention, as if traffic isn’t bad enough. Take Loxahatchee for instance: they are adding thousands of family homes, with no additional outlets, which will be a nightmare.

This same mayor has fought to extend roads to alleviate traffic issues, because of “environment.” Currently, to exit Loxahatchee, you have Seminole Pratt Whitney Road and Northlake Boulevard, which already come to a halt in the mornings. Now add thousands of more vehicles: great planning.

RUSS MCLENDON,