Don Schneider: Changes on College Avenue are indefensible

If every student at Modesto Junior College rode a bicycle to school, it would be impossible to justify the expenditure of over $2 million to change the roads to make them bicycle-safe. All of the changes on College Avenue were paid for by Modesto taxpayers; no federal funds involved. The changes were not mandated by the federal or state governments.

All over America, roads are being expanded to handle increasing traffic. Here in Modesto we are spending millions to handle the volume of bicycle traffic. But where are the bicycles?

Additionally, we are being asked to vote for a tax increase to pay for more police officers and better protection. Those $2 million would have done a lot to provide more officers.

The engineers who designed these changes don’t even work in the public works department. Public Works had nothing to do with these outrageous, radical and unsafe road changes.

They’re not done yet. This same program is removing a northbound lane of Tully Road. Worse, in several locations on College and on Tully they are planning to put in the raised concrete islands that had to be removed at Tully and Briggsmore a few months ago at considerable expense. Why?

This story was originally published September 28, 2015 at 12:52 PM with the headline "Don Schneider: Changes on College Avenue are indefensible."