Baker Drive (off Old County Home Road) is deceptively marked as not a through street when it is one, and this marking, along with similar discouragement of residential shortcuts by the city, wastes gas, increases Asheville’s high VMTs (vehicle miles traveled), causes climate change and violates the urban planning principle of connectivity.
What cities should do instead is rezone such shortcuts commercially, so that commercial bidders can buy out quiet-loving homeowners, enabling the latter to relocate to quiet areas that are not on important transport routes, rather than forcing drivers and sometimes bikers to bother and endanger more people by driving farther. Hopefully, they can choose politically allied neighbors while at it.
The speed humps on Lakeshore Drive seem tolerable, but those on Shelburne Road are too tall, potentially damaging cars and trucks that are obeying the speed limit. My favorite speed humps are, or were, on Bearden Avenue, as they were free, having been constructed for us by frost. Gun owners also need to drive from Reems Creek directly to Riceville to bypass Asheville hostility, though I’ve been told a gate on a dirt road shortcut is often locked. The student shortcut to east Cullowhee also needs improvement.
— Alan Ditmore
Leicester
Jeez, did Trump write this?