Broadway changes poorly designed

To the editor:

It was a dark and stormy night. Specifically, it was last week, and the location was Broadway on the newly constructed portion between Henderson Avenue and Pacific Street. There was a car on the concrete island in the middle of the street -- and not the first one, judging by all the tire marks on the curb.

Why do so many cars seem to have problems at the Henderson-Broadway intersection, particularly since the city and university spent hundreds of thousands of dollars improving it? The reasons are multiple, but all are due to poor design. The concrete islands don't follow the natural flow of traffic. A concrete island juts out on the right on eastbound Broadway. Add to this the absence of street lights anywhere near the intersection and poorly marked turn lanes.

One must also wonder how long it will be before someone sues the city over the issue of handicapped access. The curb cuts for wheelchairs are inaccessible when Pagliai's Pizza has a chain across its parking-lot entrance.

Also, somehow in the improvements we lost the left-turn lane on westbound Broadway at Harmony Street. There's nothing like spending lots of money to make traffic flow worse. Perhaps in the future street plans should have a more thorough review before lots of taxpayer money is spent on inadequately designed improvements.

PETER GORDON, Cape Girardeau