Re: "City wins transportation award," The Gazette, May 25.
I was flabbergasted to hear that anybody could award the St. Albert transportation department an award. Then I realized the award was given for reducing the time it takes to travel through St. Albert from 30 minutes to 20 minutes, a drive that should actually take 10 minutes. Well, congratulations.
In the name of equality, I'd like to award them last place in the Readers' Choice Award. That drive through St. Albert perhaps wouldn't take so long if we didn't insist on erecting a traffic light anywhere a woodland creature wandered near a road. St. Albert is a comedy of speed-sucking traffic obstacles and odd traffic management features mainly based on the fact that every set of traffic lights contains more filters than an average Class C operating theatre.
There’s the redundant roundabout with yellow asparagus; another redundant roundabout to connect two empty roads on Ebony; and even when a roundabout was put in the right place, we chose to turn it into an almond for some reason. You can add to that our single-lane Henday, the Costco u-turn and, for some reason, that we chose to move the entire of St. Albert Trail left by 50 feet, only enough so you no longer know where lanes are going when you pass through the intersection by Walmart.
Here's to the next award.
Steve Hargreaves, St. Albert
