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Let's not race to trade our village for Daytona
© St. Petersburg Times Jessie and I would like to have the last word about last weekend's CART races. Our take on the events will not sit well with the city fathers. Or the city mothers. It will not sit well with car racing enthusiasts in general. We don't care. In fact, Jessie thinks that car racing -- Indy, stock or CART -- is for people who don't understand professional wrestling. But that's our opinion, and we don't expect that anyone will jump on our opinion to drive public policy. Our problem with the CART races can be summed up in a single thought: When is the city of St. Petersburg going to decide what it wants to be? For several years now we have put up with angle parking that so devastates lines of sight a driver must practically put his front bumpers on the yellow center lines before he can see the car that is about to hit him broadside. We have put up with those so-called neckouts, the bulges in curbs at crosswalks which, in theory, are supposed to cut the distance older citizens must walk to make it safely across the street. And perhaps they work. But they also create axle-breaking obstacles in the many places where they are hard to see after dark and in stormy weather. We have put up with landscaping that works like slalom courses on residential streets. We have put up with traffic circles of dubious purpose in dubious places. We have put up with this whole concept of turning downtown St. Petersburg into a village. In fact, we have put up with the village notion for so long that we actually have come to like it. We like it so much that we have entertained the idea of buying into one of these new condo projects going up in downtown, so that we might be within walking distance of angle parking and neckouts, not to mention all the wonderful shops, restaurants and other downtown attractions. But the CART races have given us serious second thoughts. Yes, there is all that wonderful new pavement downtown, but you get to use it only if you happen to be driving the same circuit that the race cars traveled. Most of the rest of the city's streets are hopelessly and perhaps irrevocably wrecked. Still. For reasons that absolutely escape us, city leaders ordered streets blocked off on the Tuesday before the weekend races, so that all week long people were forced to drive the wrong way down one-way streets just to get home or to work. Little white no-parking signs went up early for parking spaces nowhere near the race course. What the heck was that about? And by all accounts, the races did nothing to help downtown merchants. A few charities got carloads of donations, and that's fine. If folks want to dress up and throw balls for themselves and write checks for worthy causes, we applaud. But they can do that any old weekend. Why do they need to attach a bunch of car races to their largesse? If the noise of the races wasn't enough to turn you off, how about the stench of the fuel? A few charities got carloads of donations, and that's fine. If folks want to dress up and throw balls for themselves and write checks for worthy causes, we applaud. But they can do that any old weekend. Why do they need to attach a bunch of car races to their largesse? We were reminded of the line from the movie classic, Apocalypse Now, when Robert Duvall's character, Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore, offers his assessment of the Vietnam War: "I love the smell of napalm in the morning." So what's it going to be? Is St. Petersburg going to continue to thrive as a village? Or are we going to try to become Daytona? Keep one thing in mind. There is no such place as Daytona Village. Julia Solomon of St. Petersburg asked us an interesting question which we can't answer. If anyone out there can, please write. "Why do all of the cars have such large tail lights that can be seen from a distance when the 18-wheelers have those half-dollar size (lights) which cannot be seen until you are right on top of them?" Julia asks. "In rain or fog, you can follow the cars, but you can't even see the trucks." At first we wondered if the visibility problem might be due to the fact that the 18 tires on those trucks throw up a lot more water off the pavement, blocking the tail lights. But most of the big trucks also have mud flaps, which should help reduce the rooster tails. So we admit, we don't know. Are there any big rig drivers out there with an insight? Let us say straight out here that we do not believe the state roadies and their contractors nip at the cooking sherry while working. But I think we can be forgiven for agreeing with Jack Tunstill of Seminole that something isn't quite right with some of the new traffic signals on Tyrone Boulevard between 66th Street N and Park Street. Westbound at 68th Street, for example, the signal that controls the left through lane is centered over the lane, but the signal that controls the right through lane is over the lane divider lines. Further along, where Tyrone intersects 38th Avenue and 80th Street, the signal for the right lane is centered over the right lane, but the light for the left lane is over the lane divider line. Similar situations exist eastbound on Tyrone at the same intersections and also at 66th Street. It isn't that motorists couldn't muddle through and figure it out, but west of Tyrone Square Mall the lane lines on the new concrete are so faint that motorists might be tempted to line themselves up on the light signals, which would have them straddling lanes. Not a good thing. Weird sign of the week. You are southbound on 66th Street about to turn left onto First Avenue S. There is a sign to your right that used to say, "No Parking Any Time." But somebody has taped over the word, "Parking," so the sign now reads, "No Any Time." So don't think about doing anything at that intersection. No moving, no stopping, no standing, no going, no loitering, no eating, no sleeping, no nothing. Not at any time. Sigh. -- Dr. Delay can be reached by e-mail at docdelay@sptimes.com , by fax at (727) 893-8675 or by snail mail at 490 First Ave. S, St. Petersburg 33701.
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