While we're at it ...

2012 07 09: Update
The West Liberty construction is now finished, and the street is open again.

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Posting pictures, that is, here are a couple of screen shots to ponder. First, here's the overall 2012 satanic plot summer construction plan, as reported in A2.com and enhanced by our crack ground-truth team.

Click on it for a bigger version. The yellow lines are streets torn up, closed, or with lane closures -- or planned for this fate. Note, in particular, the damage being inflicted on East/West traffic on Stadium, Liberty, and Miller. These projects are underway now, simultaneously.

Update 2012 06 18: per ground truth conducted this morning, the Huron Parkway devastation is just about over with. There's still some work going on at the Geddes and Fuller intersection, but otherwise, it was clear sailing.

If you look very, very closely at the center of the image, you can see a tiny segment of green. That's the one block of 5th Avenue that was recently completed and reopened to traffic. In case it's too small, here's a bigger picture.


Given that it took two years to complete that one block, anyone with the ability to perform a linear projection should be able to conclude that we will never be able to go across town again. Of course, this would be unscientific, as unscientific as, say, the good legislators of North Carolina, who want to require their state government to use only linear models for climate change. But that's a totally different story, innit?

Oh, and by the way, look how badly the roof of the transit center is skewed! Hasn't anyone noticed by now? I want my money back!

A suggestion WRT the Ann Arbor Marathon

Having not sufficiently contributed to divisiveness and partisanship, not to say clan violence between the Evil Westsiders and the Righteous Sons of Liberty who dwell on the East Side (you can see how far this gone, already,)the city allowed this weekend's Ann Arbor Marathon to be routed along Main Street from the heart of downtown clear out to Briarwood, effectively preventing any traffic from getting anywhere along any east/west route.

Now, my understanding of marathons and other examples of self-abuse healthy exercise is limited, but I do know that they pose a planning problem in that the course has to be 26.something miles long, or -- and this is the key point -- it has to add up to that number, with sufficient repetition. So for next year, if there's still a city here next year, I suggest that the run be set up to utilize another inspired piece of recent traffic engineering, and that it be routed around and around and around the Maple Road traffic circles, south of Miller.

This would inconvenience the least number of residents and taxpayers inconsequential and irrelevant members of the populace, since no one in his or her right mind would voluntarily use that piece of road to operate a motor vehicle. And it would provide entertainment, as the runners became dizzy and staggered off into the surrounding countryside.



As an alternative, the race could be set up on Yost Blvd., over on the East Side, and run around the tiny obstacle traffic-calming device that was thoughtfully constructed there in the not too distant past.

2012 06 19: Update: the Mayor appears to agree.