Tear down this wall!

Since we're on the topic of Newport, Kentucky (my birthplace!) I think it's time I mention an important local topic that I don't think I've brung up yet.

I'm not a professional civil engineer (because that opportunity was robbed from me), but the engineer in me needs to speak about this before local highway departments make mistakes that'll make us wish we clawed out our own eyes so we didn't have to drive on them. (Ooh, that's edgy!)

It has to do with the ramp from southbound Interstate 471 to KY 8. Yes, the first ramp when you cross from Cincinnati into Newport - the one for northern Bellevue and Newport on the Levee.

Everyone agrees the traffic on KY 8 in that area fucking stinks to high hell. I've had this apartment for 12 years, and traffic has gotten progressively worse the entire time.

For now, I'm proposing one very simple change that'll ease much of it.

Well, notice how the ramp in question dumps you on Park Avenue. It seems like it could go straight ahead on 3rd Street, but nope, it has a tiny curve at the end that automatically places you on Park.

It is in effect a barrier to keep you from going southwest on 3rd. It's not literally a wall, but it is in the figurative sense.

Why is it like this? Because some opulent, gentrified neighborhoods didn't want to share the traffic burden. According to this so-called "logic", it's fine to clog the other roads. Just not theirs.

Granted, the area right around the intersection is fairly working-class. But it was other blocks that raised the stink.

My proposal: tear down this wall! Remove the traffic island, and let motorists continue southwest on 3rd. While we're at it, you can probably make it so you can also go the other way on Park.

Locals have noted that the work could be done in a single day - and very inexpensively.

This change hasn't happened, because richer neighborhoods are generally against it, and they have the clout.

This is kind of like what happened with the rerouting of KY 17 in south central Covington in 2007. Affluent, leafy neighborhoods wanted traffic off their roads - so highway officials obliged by designating KY 17 to follow other streets, which encouraged motorists to use and clog them.

Money talks. And we all pay - with crumbling roads, traffic jams, and blunted interest in our working-class neighborhoods we worked so hard to build.