#313 Wood You Please

A while back I wrote about cities and their enduring quest to beautify roads and provide make-work projects for their idle pension earning staffs. Traffic Islands. Even further back I wrote about the City of Tumwater or the Port of Olympia putting in numerous traffic islands on Tumwater Blvd. And all the trees they planted in those islands and all the trees that were taken out by late night motorists not expecting any thing on the median. And how eventually the city or port was forced to put up ugly warning signs in front of the trees so motorists wouldn’t crash into them on a dark, rainy night. As any Northwest driver knows, at certain points the carwash-nighttime-downpour syndrome means that we are driving pretty much by Braille. I’m a big advocate of reflective paint on the curbs surrounding the islands, but who am I? For some reason most gadflies never manage to pass civil service psychological profiles. Time marches on. The Tumwater Blvd in question, by the way, used to be called Airdustrial Way before its beautification. The City of Tumwater shares an uneasy partnership with the Port of Olympia in the area and Airdustrial way, while a difficult and goofy name to say, was meant to convey the Port’s desire that the area be filled with light industry conducive to airport shipping and what not. The City of Tumwater has pretty much surrounded the area with a no-end-in-sight office park, wooing state agencies from the next-door Capital. Many of these state workers come from Lacey and West Olympia and share a common desire to come to work and get home in under twelve hours. So, the widening they did to Tumwater Blvd during the island beautification plan is now not wide enough. Arguably, it never was. The ultimate extra-widening of Tumwater Blvd has been in the plans for a long time. But some stopgap civil servant or budget bureaucracy decided that since beautification dollars were available back then, spend them, so the crash islands commenced. The other day I drove down the Blvd, and guess what? The new widening has begun. The first step? Cut down all the trees, remove the traffic islands. Started as little 3-inch diameter 10 feet tall saplings, the ones that survived the initial driveovers were now up around thirty feet. They have been watered and tended for the last five or six years, lovingly pruned and nourished by the faithful employees of the roads department. Now they’ve been cut down in the prime of their tree adolescence and cast aside to make room for more traffic. But you don’t have to worry about them. They have received an honorable discharge. A retirement fitting a loyal civil servant. The trees that served the city on the median so well these last five years, are at rest now as they continue to serve and beautify in a park-like setting. As beauty bark in city hall landscaping. Waste not, want not.
America, ya gotta love it.