(Milford)– An open house informational event Thursday evening on whether or not to convert Highway 71 through Milford from four lanes to three drew mixed comments. Wes Boyer is a Municipal Project Manager with the Spencer office of the Bolten and Menk Engineering firm…
“A lot of good feedback tonight at the open house. It’s been nice to hear from folks who live and work here in town and kind of getting their thoughts on their experience through town and if there’s ways to make things better and kind of what are the concerns they have.”
Boyer says the public appears to be pretty much evenly split on the issue based on the comments at Thursday night’s open house…
“I think there’s a little bit of both sides. There’s pros and cons to a three lane conversion. Some of those, with a three lane there’s less conflict points. So from an accident perspective, studies have shown that three lanes help from that standpoint. There also are disadvantages to the three lane. Sometimes that traffic cueing can line up in a three lane because you’ve got kind of single traffic where it starts to stack behind that with no opportunity to pass. So there are pros and cons and we’ve heard from both. People that live along the corridor and just live and work use the corridor, like myself to be quite honest, so. Kind of 50-50 you think? Yeah, it really is 50-50 and you know our goal here tonight, Bolten and Menk’s goal through this is just to get that feedback at this point. The city, they want to gather the feedback through the community to really help guide the decisions I think are made here, and then just working collaboratively with the D.O.T as they continue forward will be important.”
Boyer adds those who were unable to attend the open house still have an opportunity to give input…
As we reported previously the Milford City Council will review the input from the open house and online survey at their meeting March 24th.
