Tomorrow I’ll head to Yakima, a much-anticipated change of scenery. Not that the scenery around here is bad, but one can get too much of a good thing.
But I won’t be able to see the solution of a problem that cropped up in town this summer. Both the state and the city resurfaced their streets and highways this summer. State 20 takes a hard right into the ferry terminal, then PT’s main street continues straight. Both entities shared the materials, the contractors, the designs, and the laborers. But, the two roads missed each other by about 6 feet. So if you don’t want the ferry, there’s a jog in the road to downtown.
This didn’t become apparent until the very end of the two projects, about 2 months ago. Since then, neither side has done anything further. It’s a standoff. The state can’t adjust without expanding the seawall, the city would have to sacrifice a portion of the bike lane and a rain garden.
Rain Garden: Rather than collecting stormwater runoff (ie, rain) into a pipe discharging directly into the bay, it’s directed into a small garden at each street intersection that contains native plants known to absorb pollutants, growing in a sand filter that performs similarly, before draining into the bay. Or, exactly how nature worked before humans fucked it up. I’m not skeptical that it works, but it’s only appropriate in extremely small applications. There are some folk that become very emotional about these.
Enough of PT…