On Third Avenue, there are bulb-outs.
On Fifth Avenue, there's butt ugly.
It's great that the City of Prince George switched to angle parking along Fifth Avenue this past summer, substantially increasing the amount of on-street parking downtown. The head scratcher is the installation of the stupid bollards along most of the street corners.
Besides being an ugly way to slow traffic and make pedestrians safer, the bollards are black, so they are harder to see at night.
The bollards force anyone driving something bigger than a sports coupe to swing out wide when turning onto Fifth Avenue for fear of scraping up the passenger side of their vehicle.
We can't wait to see when a city grader or loader wipes out one of more of the bollards while clearing downtown after a huge dump of snow. We also expect to see city employees cursing under their breath as they have to jump out of their sidewalk bobcat to shovel snow out from between the bollards.
And it's not if, but when, one or more drivers will slide into one on an icy weekday morning.
At least on Third Avenue, the same idea was done properly with bulb-outs.
That's the name for the rounded sidewalk extensions out into the intersections that shortens the distance pedestrians have to cross, slows traffic and encourages eye contact between drivers and pedestrians at busy corners. The bulb-outs are still a challenge to snow removal crews, who have to proceed carefully around them, but nowhere near the headache the bollards will cause.
Drivers also don't have to fear the bollards on Third Avenue - the worst that can happen is they'll bump into the curb, rather than sustain thousands of dollars of body damage to their vehicle caused by an unnecessary collision with a short steel pole that has no business standing on a street corner.
The bollards are, of course, much cheaper than building bulb-outs and laying down nice brick, but you pay for what you get.
Hopefully, this is just a temporary measure and Fifth Avenue will get fixed up right with bulb-outs next summer.
Until then, drivers and pedestrians are encouraged to proceed with extreme caution on Fifth Avenue for the next six months.
Or at least until a thoughtful city employee accidentally on purpose does the right thing and clears them away with the rest of the snow.
-- Editor-in-chief Neil Godbout
