ASK THE BORED: Decades too late, but the two-way sanity project finally begins. That it took this long is an embarrassment.

Two or three times every year, mostly on weekends during fair weather, I'll be outside doing something, and I'll hear the approach of motorcycles.

Seconds later, two of them will fly past, one in each westbound lane on a one-way street built for drag racing. Accordingly, they'll be doing 60 mph, and probably higher.

I always look toward downtown to see if they made it past the curve at 10th Street. So far they always have. It's almost a disappointment.

But I don't want anyone getting hurt -- neither motorcyclists nor bicyclists, or the children playing on both sides of Spring on my block, and not even the truckers whose rigs are twice the size of a nearby shotgun house, usually driving faster than they should through a densely populated neighborhood.

No, save the torture for several generations of shortsighted, wind-bagged, thought-challenged New Albany politicians, who for 50 years were perfectly content to empower anti-social automotive behavior to the detriment of their own community simply because they couldn't imagine their way through a wet beer label with a squirt gun held to their heads.

In all sincerity, those many politicians and their functionaries can rot in hell for all I care.

At long last, the "grid modernization" project is under way. It should have been done years ago, and it might have been done far less expensively. Still, very soon I hope to be sitting in a lawn chair on my verge, gin and tonic in hand, laughing at the auto-centric fools who are red-faced and flatulent at having to expend an extra five minutes to pass through a city where few of them even live.

Here's an excerpt from last week's BOW meeting minutes.

---

Wes Christmas, Clark Dietz, explained that the work is on schedule for the grid modernization and paving and they will be wrapping up patching activity this week. He stated that the milling and paving on Spring Street will begin on Monday the 15th starting at the east end going west and it should be complete by the end of next week.

Mr. Nash asked if the traffic will remain in the same pattern while the work is being done.

Mr. Christmas stated that it will remain in the same pattern as it currently exists until they come through and put the new pavement markings in. He added that all the paving work will be done before the switch takes place and under the current paving schedule it should be finished by the end of June, weather dependent.

Mr. Nash asked about the status on the signal modernization.

Mr. Lincks stated that they are currently identifying utilities as well as boring from the potholes to detect the utilities to run the conduit in preparation for the paving. He added that they are currently on Spring Street doing that work and will continue that work until Spring, Elm and Market are complete.

Mr. Nash asked if the conduit goes in the paving to activate the signals.

Mr. Lincks stated the conduit runs from the detector housings to hand holes which are located near the signal pole locations.

Mr. Summers stated that the conduit allows for the wiring of the signals to go underground.

Mr. Lincks explained that this will be followed by the paving work and they do it this way so that the pavement doesn’t have to be disturbed later.

Mr. Christmas stated that once the underground work is complete on Elm Street they will jump over to Elm with the paving operations.

Mr. Thompson added except for the work at Breakwater.

Mr. Christmas stated that they started work in parking lane at 1st Street and Main Street yesterday and there is no real impact on traffic.