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May 19 , 2004 - Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Valley&State Backpage O&E Sports Archives Classifieds Faith&Beliefs Obituaries Revels February 20, 2004 Downtown City has a cure for cone affiction Andrew Scot Bolsinger On a smaller scale, driving Siskiyou Boulevard and peering in the windows of other cars looks strangely familiar to scenes of larger traffic snarls on the sprawling, entangled streets of Los Angeles. Some knuckles appear white. Lips curl into a sneer. Cars lurch forward only to stop quickly again, especially near two lights at Ashland and Wightman streets that seem hopelessly out of sync. Closer to downtown, another light brings cars to a sudden stop just past the fire station. Collectively, a general stir of discontent that could easily be labeled "Orange Cone Virus" fills the air. Actually, left untreated, the Orange Cone Virus can morph into a more aggressive strain of malaise, "Stop Light Syndrome." Sounds serious. But a cure, at least to some extent, is on the way soon. Coordination "I know more now about traffic signals than I ever wanted to know," City Public Works Director Paula Brown says, "but that's not an expertise we have on staff, so we still rely on ODOT." The responsibility for coordinating the lights falls to the Oregon Department of Transportation. Each of the signals will soon be timed in such a way that a driver, once stopped, should be able to proceed down the rest of the length of Siskiyou Boulevard without catching another light. Brown hopes the work will be done, "in the next couple of weeks. I don't want [drivers] to stop five times in one trip," she said. That's good news to many, like local architect and feng shui consultant Joyce Ward, who wrote the city last week about the energy waste caused by abundant stops and starts. "The City of Ashland," she wrote, "now requires every car that drives through town to slow down, stop, idle and accelerate at twice the number of stop lights that we used to have. That is an enormous waste of gasoline and a large increase in air pollution in our small valley." Ward wondered whether timing devices had been used to help. The answer, Brown says, is yes. In addition to the coordination of the lights, each will have an indicator for both bikes and cars. The sensor helps keep people from sitting for excessively long periods of time, but it also helps Brown and ODOT monitor the number of cars and how long the light should operate. The result, Brown says, will be a lot of "tweaking" to get the light to perform at maximum efficiency. Stopping the syndrome Brown knows people are frustrated, but remains confident in the end result. In the meantime, she continues to do whatever she can to help alleviate the rising incidence of Stop Light Syndrome. So the light situation will improve? "Absolutely," she says. "Don't hold me to it tomorrow, but absolutely." The end of a long project looks as good to Brown as it does to the rest of city residents. Still, Brown has maintained her patience, optimism and sense of humor through the long ordeal. "Ultimately it will be really good for traffic flow, and for pedestrians," Brown says of the project. "But it's going to take this break-in factor - not the breaking factor - but the break-in factor." The boulevard construction is a popular dart board for many in the city. Few can say they haven't pounded the steering wheel in frustration at least one time or another. The cones are a nagging, unsightly reminder of a project that really has dragged on much too long. But nobody knows that better than Brown. "It's OK to blame me," she says. "Even though it's an ODOT project, they can blame me some more." Because Brown knows Orange Cone Virus and the Spotlight Syndrome are curable, and the cure is coming soon. "What keeps me from going insane is that Siskiyou is a good project," she says. "It looks good too." DailyTidings.com Home Page Valley&State | Backpage | O&E | Sports | Archives | Weather | Classifieds Columnists | Faith&Beliefs | Obituaries | Revels | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2004 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Site Search: .:Advertisements:. RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams