Street fixes needed in Yarmouth

Talk of working on the 100 series highway around Starrs Road opens an opportunity to address other traffic concerns.

Sticking with the Starrs Road area it’s time someone had sense enough to realize that the airport stretch is in need of a couple of changes.

For starters it is no longer a desolate stretch of highway. It is a busy spot with several relatively new businesses drawing considerable traffic. It has become a destination area as opposed to the old way in and out of town.

The speed limit (80 for most of it), is now far too fast for what has developed there. Knock it down to 50.

The airport stretch is also in dire need of being widened. Nowhere around here can you find such a narrow road that sees the kind of traffic that one sees.

In the town limits there are some obvious trouble areas. This newspaper office is located near one of the ones most in need of fixing.

Four-way stop signs should be placed at the Collins Street and Second Street intersection. It’s not uncommon for someone to have an accident there every month or so because the intersection, next to the town’s largest parking lot, has people parking all around it making visibility less than ideal and there are only two stop signs (on the Second Street sides of the intersection.)

Besides the regular spate of accidents we’ve seen at that spot we have also seen people stopping on the east-west route (Collins Street) and waving on the motorists who, as it stands, have correctly stopped at the Second Street stop signs waiting for the Collins Street traffic to move through. This town has no shortage of traffic cops trying to move cars along—the problem is most of them don’t have badges.

Another thing that should be looked at is the parking situation around a few of the churches in town.

In some cases the parking along the street next to the churches effetively makes what are normally two lane streets into one lane streets. Parishoners should consider that when they park they should keep in mind what their parking choices could mean should fire trucks have to get to the area—to their church even.

Not so long ago when cars parked on both sides of Kempt Street, effectively turning it into a one lane street every time there was a ball game at the field there, the authorities stepped in to put a stop to it. They recognized the danger. While churches aren’t apt to get the same heavy hand they should realize the problem is similar and police it themselves. Perhaps the solution is to consider parking being allowed on only one side of the street.

There are other problem areas throughout the town. Not all of them to do with parking. But if we get into listing the huge pot holes like the one that seems to forever decorate the end of Cottage Street where it runs into Parade Street at the east end of the cemetery we’d need to add pages. If the town permitted off-site signage there’d be no better spot for a garage to post one advertising vehicle repairs than at that corner. Well, okay, maybe the pot hole leading off Hawthorn Street into the Brown Street parking lot would be better.

These are all things that should be addressed.