Clusterfuck! Howard Be Thy Name.

Ask anyone to explain traffic flow in the area directly across South McDonough from Decatur High School and their response will likely range from a dull stupor to a profound sense of befuddlement. In this installment of “Your City Speaks!,” we wrangle up some answers, beginning with what lead to two adjacent one-way streets heading in the same direction.



“It’s not a mystery,” says the city’s Deputy Manager. “The sign on East Maple Street says ‘One Way’ and it flows west. When we decided to make Howard Avenue one-way as well, our hands were tied. You can’t have a second way. It’s one way, and that way is west.”

As a result, and however redundant it might seem, it's now no longer possible to drive around the block when accessing local addresses.

“We found that if we configured our streets to ensure local traffic was forced up an extra block onto Trinity, not only could we make simple endeavors unnecessarily complicated but we’d increase congestion on an already burdened thoroughfare to boot. We even managed to devalue the commercial property along that stretch of Church by making access virtually impossible. It’s just an all around win.”

Perhaps most perplexing is why Howard (or East Maple, for that matter) became one-way to begin with. Even with the new PATH in place, the street remains wide enough for two 11’ travel lanes, one in each direction. Since the city has made no effort to designate and encourage on-street parking, the logical inference is that a single 22’ lane was intentional.

“That’s right,” continued the official. “The adjacent PATH is all about recreation. And what’s the one thing that makes recreation more exciting? Risk. By increasing the street’s width – in essence, engineering for higher speeds – we ensure that biking or walking on the PATH is never dull. When you know a careening vehicle could veer off the road at any minute and flatten you in the midst of your cardio workout, that’s invigorating!”

The ultimate result has been a clusterfuck of such immense proportions that traffic engineers, community planners, gawkers, looky-loos and eccentrics fixated on the very least of human achievement have descended upon the town to experience it first hand.

“See,” concluded the city official, “even tourism’s up. No need to thank me, though. That’s just city government in action. Happy motoring!”