Gus Macker Safety Problem Solved Again; Not implemented

[XLFD]

This is a topic I first brought up in 2009 in another forum in the pre-Torch era, what a dark time that was.  There are many safety hazards that come up with Gus Macker weekend.  Some cannot necessarily be avoided, others can, and others are foisted upon our visitors by the poor planning of our traffic engineer (LPD Chief Mark Barnett) and/or the DPW supervisor (Kurt Malzahn). 

In 2010, I introduced the problem and offered some solutions  street-basketball-driving-the-lane.  These have been ignored without comment by those in charge of this.  The hazards go unchecked, and will likely continue until we finally get leaders who are interested in traffic safety, and in traffic flow, because the solution of the main problem is so easy to see and solve. 

This problem involves the routing of the detour to get around Macker.  Currently, the detour makes you go up Rath and turn left on Tinkham, proceed to the end of Tinkham, and turn right at Lakeshore.  Coming from the other side you take the same route.  Here is a blow up of that route in orange, the Macker's location in red.

With this vantage, you can see the basic lack of sidewalks along Tinkham, except for between the south side of Park and Ferry.  Other features like hills and obstacles in the right of way prevent anything other than walking in the street in some areas.  Here's a typical view of the intersection where the Macker meets the detour.

A convergence of cars, pedestrians, bicyclists, etcetera.  This is seriously made more dangerous by the use of Oriole Field (the black area plus in the first picture) as a parking area.  Several hundred cars, many carrying a full team or their rooting sections, makes around a thousand people that have to cross Tinkham in this area as pedestrians to get to the tournament, or to get back.  Here is a representation of this car pedestrian traffic problem.  Car routes in red, pedestrian routes in pink, as the crow flies routes in green (showing any way to or from the car parking areas (blue) involves crossing and traveling on Tinkham.

But why create this problem involving thousands of pedestrians (mostly a lot of crazy basketball players) crossing against thousands of vehicles (many driven by crazy basketball players)?  Particularly when you can just route the detour more directly up to Bryant Road, and avoid all the conflicting traffic?  This route is shown here in green; it has the same number of turns, the same number of stop signs, the same distance, but avoids the unsafe conditions that exist on Tinkham and elsewhere.  Note the pink pedestrian lanes only having to deal with local traffic and not thru traffic. 

The only reason I can think of for the Macker Masterminds to dismiss this route, is so that vehicles coming from the north would be less likely to go through Beautiful Downtown Ludington by not turning on Rath.  But those who know the area, probably already do that, and those who don't would follow the signs down Rath, I would think.  Anyway, enjoy the Macker, but play it safe in and around the fun.

[AQUAMAN]

Good point Willy, it's the local infrastructure for locals that has been ignored, and continually bypassed for decades in our city budget that should annoy all of us. Combine that with the "closing of the beach to locals for normal day to day usage", then add the lack of safety in too many areas by law enforcement, and you have the "fiasco" I declared I disliked earlier.

[XLFD]

Also, the few sidewalks and public right of ways (that aren't normally blocked) that exist in the area are often blocked off by tape or snow-fence placed precisely to prevent cars from parking on the right of way.  Besides being illegal (and tolerated by the LPD), what they do is force pedestrians into an already narrow road. 

Park, Ferry, and most E-W roads in the area won't allow two cars to pass each when people park on both sides of it.  Making wider streets and adding sidewalks are expensive, and mostly unwanted by the homeowners in that area, so this will not be fixed anytime soon.

The total lack of logistical planning by our City's genii was never more apparent than when they decided to go for a snow-angel record a couple of years ago in that area.  If you missed that, here it is.