No bridge!

In true NIMBY fashion, residents of my neighbourhood are breathing a sigh of relief (and enjoying the fact that our house values have gone up) because a proposed bridge that would have been erected (hee, I said erected) about 500 yards from my house has been scrapped. Thank the good Lord.

It would have crossed the river at its widest point (dumb), gone through the most gorgeous park in the city (dumber), and polluted this community first with noise during construction then car exhaust during use (dumberer). Twelve people would have even had their homes bulldozed to make room. It would have been absolutely awful. Imagine living under a bridge. Like a troll.

The news came down on Monday. The bridge will now be erected (hee) in the east end of the city. Honestly a third of my neighbours were on their front porches and streets talking about it. We really dodged a bullet.

The bridge is necessary since trucks and heavy machinery tend to use the inner city streets and make a racket. I used to work at a daycare right on the main drag and naptime was a disaster with 18 wheelers using their (what Scott tells me are "jake brakes") and farting their way down the road, preventing the kids from sleeping or worse yet, waking them up and preventing staff from having coffee breaks. Yuck. And no matter how many trees were planted in the yard, they couldn't make the carbon monoxide evaporate. And appropos of nothing, the giant tour buses that used to park out front.

So, while I'm empathetic about the decision affecting the residents of the east end, I'm delighted for us. I guess those puny "no bridge" signs worked.

kxx