Opinion: Loop road project is a dream gone bad

To the community,

Once again the loop road has us going in circles. The first plan for the Park Avenue Redevelopment Area 1 (Stateline) contained not only a loop road, but a satellite city hall with two parking spaces for city customers, and a monorail connecting Stateline to Ski Run. The plan was driven by wishes, wishes that haven’t been fulfilled.

The current loop road plan is a planner’s dream, a dream that may turn into a nightmare because to do the loop as planned, workforce housing will have to be taken by the agency. Thus, the agency talks of using eminent domain to take property. A problem is the City Council on a vote of 5-0 killed future use of eminent domain in Redevelopment Area 1. Thus, the agency and the city are on a collision course.

Bill Crawford

And the loop road as dreamed of would reroute commercial vehicles through neighborhoods. The planners ignore the traffic of 18-wheelers and other large commercial vehicles. Also, regardless of what happens or doesn’t happen, the 18-wheelers , etc., will always be with us. All that the planned loop road would achieve is a bottleneck because the 18-wheelers, etc., have to return to Highway 50 to complete the business of transporting goods and services from A to B. If the dreamers would wake up, they would realize that there is no satisfactory alternative to the present passage of vehicles through the casino canyon. We are hemmed in by the lake and the mountains. That’s not likely to change. Not even by dreamers planning.

The message for me is, be what we seem to be. Minus the pretense, the community is a mountain border town locked into lost causes.

Bill Crawford, South Lake Tahoe