Village Parkway

There is a lot of chatter out there to move the “Village Parkway” plan to the top of the City’s projects list. The plan sounds and looks wonderful and I applaud the concept of raised levels as a clever way to separate the various uses! With that said, I have to ask—why would we want to spend $1.1 mil on a non-priority project when we have areas where the traffic is so bad atheists are beginning to pray for some relief?

You might reply that we need to take advantage of the $1.4 mil Federal grant. Why? Even if the Feds do pay about half, that still leaves us with a $1.1 mil debt and no closer to solving any real traffic problem. How illogical is that?

Spending a million here and a million there for “feel good” projects while everyone sits in traffic is insane. Traffic and roads are the number one priority whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.

Dunwoody was developed for housing with no thought in mind of becoming a city. There were lots of trees, plenty of land for big lots, and the only other need was a few grocery stores; after all, we could easily drive to Lenox, Perimeter or Northlake Malls to shop. To rush in to try to quickly turn Dunwoody into an urban setting will be courting disaster.

If we continue to try and function on narrow suburban streets, our economic base will decline because even our busiest streets quickly narrow down to two lanes! This will eventually choke the life out of our City, and as history has shown, once a decline starts it is almost impossible to reverse. (Remember the failed costly “Urban Renewal” projects!)

The fiasco of the toll lanes on I-85 is a good example that the Feds do not always have the best solution. When faced with an angry populace all the State could say was, “uh…uh…duh…” because they suddenly found they had absolutely no authority to manage this explosive situation. Now after months, the State is still on its knees begging the Feds for authority to implement solutions. And what is the answer coming from the Feds? A resounding “No, we’ll handle it our way”…so traffic continues to creep along on one of the busiest highways in the nation! Insanity strikes again!

Let us be cautious of following “Plans” implemented by the agendas of and funded by outside organizations. Nothing is free so let us not be so quick to grab at the “honey pot” that we fail to take into consideration the sting of the bees.

Jeanette Smith