Narrowing streets an excuse to spend

Narrowing wide multilane streets seems to be the latest wrinkle politicians and their consultants can point at to say, “Look what I have done for you.”

A while back, North Palm Beach decided to develop a master plan. They hired a consulting firm funded by local governments, no less. One of their ideas was to narrow U.S. 1 to encourage pedestrian use.

I was asked as a resident and retired engineer and senior executive to talk with the consultants. I made two points:

First, the almost yearround heat does not encourage a lot of pedestrian use. In my experience, most Floridians go to the beach, go shopping, go to restaurants and use the sidewalks primarily to exercise in the early morning, late afternoon and traveling from point A to point B. I don’t see existing sidewalks as being overcrowded.

Second, our forefathers had the wisdom to plan expansive streets here to maintain reasonable traffic congestion. Building those multilane streets cost many millions of taxpayer dollars. Now politicians and their consultants want to spend many more millions to narrow them. I told the consultant that just didn’t make sense. His response was that there were tax dollars out there and didn’t I want to get my share? I was flabbergasted.

And politicians wonder why I have no respect for them.

This wrinkle seems to be contagious. I understand Tequesta is now narrowing a multilane street. And now West Palm Beach Mayor Jeri Muoio is pushing to jump on the bandwagon. ROBERT MONK JR., NORTH PALM BEACH