The movement to get a light installed at the corner of Stephanie Way and Hwy 395 is making some progress. The organizers have collected nearly 6,000 signatures on their petition, but more than that, they’ve actually gotten the State to start doing something. And getting a government agency even to consider action is a massive accomplishment.
According to quotes in the Nevada Appeal and Reno Gazette Journal, NDOT has been studying the Stephanie Way interchange, and lumped the stoplight in with a couple of other bullshit ideas in the name of “keeping their options open”. They’re holding a meeting this Saturday, October 15, from 9am to noon at Carson Valley Middle School in Gardnerville. The point of this meeting won’t just be to talk about the signal, but to discuss “safety on Highway 395 between highways 50 and 88 in Minden”. Good god, leave it to the government to take something simple and drag it out to include all kinds of irrelevant crap. Among the options being discussed will be installing a signal at Stephanie, lowering the speed limit through the valley, and eliminating the left turn lane at Stephanie.
And I just want to stand up right now and say that if they eliminate that left turn lane, then the whole of the Nevada Department of Transportation can lick my left nut. What in the holy hell do they think that is going to accomplish? Lowering the speed limit is going to piss people off enough, and in the end everyone’s just going to drive 70 MPH through there like they do now. But if they take out that turn lane, that I use at least once a day, that hundreds of people who live out Stephanie use at least once every day, they’re going to have an angry mob on their hands. We’re going to descend on their office building on Stewart Street and rip it apart brick by brick, and then we’re just going to cut across the median to make a left turn onto Stephanie anyway. Does NDOT seriously have their collective head this far up their communal ass? Seriously?
Come on. Already nobody makes a left turn from Stephanie, because you have to sit there for ten minutes waiting for a break in traffic. Now you want to make it so nobody can turn onto Stephanie? Why don’t you just tear up the goddamned road if that’s the case, if you really want to make it that hard for people to drive on it. Do they want to shuttle traffic onto Johnson Lane? And if they do, do they have any plans to widen it from the two lanes it is now? In the middle of all their “studies” and “guidelines” and “consideration”, did anyone stop to pull down that big dusty book from the shelf? The one titled Common Sense? This is why people hate engineers. Jesus.
Everyone wants a stop light at Stephanie. Stop dicking around and give it to them.