walrus51

No matter how special, there seems to be an aura of stupidity, ignorance or greed somewhere near City Hall…

Someone at Clearwater City Hall may have recently read the book “Who Moved My Cheese” and got inspired to move everyone’s cheese.

We recently had a dinner guest (Jim) from D.C. on a Saturday evening.  He was staying at the Wyndham Grand on the Beach.  He used Uber to get to his hotel on a Thursday evening, and his plan was to use Uber to get from the beach back to our Pride Neighborhood in Clearwater, a 5 mile, 11 minute ride on almost any Saturday evening in August.

Jim’s Uber got stuck on the Memorial Causeway enroute to the Wyndham, thus was 45 minutes late arriving at the hotel.  Then, it took a bit more than 25 minutes from the hotel to our Pride Neighborhood.

We did have a nice dinner, although it seemed that the drama might have been significantly reduced if the architects of “Beach by Design” had bothered to incorporate some real and honest transportation planning into their original document; and/or various revisions along the way.

Let us not forget that Beach by Design was adopted in 2001 to help guide ‘thoughtful revitalization strategies governing Clearwater Beach, focused on six components’: land use; mobility; off-street parking; catalytic projects; economic feasibility and financing; and design guidelines.

The old Memorial Causeway bridge going over to the beach was built in the early 1960’s as a 4-lane drawbridge.

I remember those days!  A sailboat (a.k.a. ‘rag bagger’) could easily cause a 10 to 15 minute delay for those many folks in cars who were driving to or from the beach!

The new Bridge – construction began in 2001, completed in 2005 – is still 4 lanes for vehicular traffic, but is elevated off the water so that there is no need for a drawbridge.  The sailboats can come and go as they please, but the traffic delays on the bridge are now worse than ever before.

The knuckleheads who envisioned, designed, approved and constructed the new bridge somehow forgot to consider the probable impact from increased traffic due to the planned surge in capacity due to new hotels, restaurants, etc.

They just plumb forgot to incorporate a mass people mover – something like what we have at Tampa International:

•  Elevated; Electric; Automated; Safe; Convenient; Cost effective.

Instead of working to mitigate the predictable negative externalities from an increase in the number and frequency of internal combustion vehicles coming to (and from) the Beach, these former elected officials from our past seem to have fretted over increasing both the cost of parking fees and the number of parking spaces to a point which is intolerable to most residents and visitors alike.  There must be an explanation, although it is quite elusive.

But, Wait!  One of the dinosaurs from 2001 has been recently awakened, and now appointed to serve as Interim Mayor of Clearwater!

As has been said in previous retrospectives, “Only in Clearwater could the Cabal get away with this sort of ‘apparently innocent’ fraud, malfeasance and corruption.”