LETTERS: SUGGESTIONS FOR JACKSON HIGHWAY

To the editor:

This is a letter we sent to the Missouri Department of Transportation regarding proposed alternative route for Highways 34 and 72 in Jackson:

Gentlemen: We attended the meeting at Jackson Middle School on May 18 and placed a letter in the available box concerning our objection to your proposal. We also talked to the lady who recorded our message. This letter is meant to be a little more inclusive.

We live on West Jackson Boulevard (Highway 72 West) in Jackson, and our home is between East Lane and West Lane streets. We believe you do not need a five-lane highway to meet the needs of the traffic. A three-lane highway with the center lane being a turning lane and a stoplight at East Lane and Old Toll Road, a stoplight at the intersection of Farmington Street and Route PP, widening the bridge over Hubble Creek and improving the Highway 34-72 intersection west of Jackson are the major improvements that are necessary. You put in a stoplight at West Lane after two young ladies were killed there. Should we wait for that to happen at East Lane, Route PP and at the intersection of Highway 34-72? One of your representatives at the meeting told us there was no definite plan at this time for a stoplight at East Lane.

We have four schools -- junior high, West Lane, middles school and Orchard -- north of Highway 72 between East Lane and West Lane. Your major traffic problems during the school year are between East Lane and West Lane with buses and cars turning in or out. The Jackson School District has 55 school buses, and all but five or six make trips to these schools daily. I believe there are also hundreds of parents who bring their children to these schools each morning and pick them up in the afternoon.

In addition to the daily school, there are hundreds of schoolchildren who have soccer practice, basketball practice and games in the afternoon or Saturday all during the school year. Most of these students are brought to practice and picked up by parents. The majority of this traffic turns in or out of East Lane or West Lane. Our back yard joins the school ground, and we see all of this daily.

We are retired Jackson High School teachers, and our home has been at the same place on Highway 72 many, many years. We have seen the daily pattern of traffic over these years, and we see the urgent need for a turning lane and stoplight at East Lane. There have been many wrecks there the last few years, but none yet has been fatal.

All the new businesses -- development has been tremendous the last few years -- have all been built on East Jackson Boulevard. We have very few businesses on this highway, and they are not a traffic problem. A very large part of our traffic problem, as mentioned above, is during the school year, and that problem is the turning in and out of East Lane and West Lane.

We believe it is a waste of money to spend $12.8 million for a five-lane highway when a three-lane one with the two stoplights as well as widening the bridge over Hubble creek and improvement of the Highway 34-72 intersection would solve the problem.

We hope you will consider the above recommendations.

HUGHES and DORIS DAVAULT

Jackson