Costs associated with 4th Street continue to mount. Currently a group of eight are scraping the “temporary road markings” on 5th street. I guess they don’t want people using that as a spare road as well. I still laugh when people begin driving right down the mall and ask for directions to the hotel. On 4th there is a kind officer who stands there to help out with the lunchtime crowd. We don’t want anyone getting run down after getting a salad from the Country Store.
The stop sign for cars passing northward under the bridge has been removed (the base is marginally visible in this photo), as well as the gigantic DO NOT ENTER sign along the southward direction. With no stop sign heading northward I think the impact will be just a bit greater as trucks roll right through there and get pinned under the tracks due to excessive truck height. That seems to happen about once per week based on casual observations. I wonder if a truck will finally knock something loose?
There’s going to be more costs soon. The city apparently forgot that blind people walk on the Downtown Mall and that the ADA is in effect. Because the walkway surface and the street surface are flush there is no way for a blind person to tell that they have left the walkway and are in the street. This is also the case at the intersection of 7th Street and the Mall by the lobster trap. The city is going to have to create a way for the blind to tell that they are at the point where the walkway meets the street. More than likely that will be the yellow bumps that are now being put on curb ramps.