Edinburgh Council
I live in a smallish village near Edinburgh.

We have a main road behind our house, which heads right out of the village. On the outskirts of the village, the road has been closed for about a year as a new trunk road is being built which bridges over the main road.

Keeping up so far?

Immediately behind my house, the road takes a blind bend. On the other side of the road, just around the bend, is a nursery and a community centre, and as a result, the spot is a popular crossing point, with mothers, toddlers, buggies, prams, wheelchairs - you name it, crossing the road.

A lollipop lady used to operate at this point, as there is no pelican crossing. However, she has been relocated to elsewhere in the village to fill in for a colleague who left his job. Our crossing was deemed by the Council to be no longer important enough to have a lollipop lady as the main road was closed further down the road, and hence the road is no longer busy enough. However, there is still plenty of local traffic moving up and down the road, so there is still a danger.

The council, in their infinite wisdom, have now decided to place bus stops right on the bend - on both sides of the road. Traffic coming down the road, and around the blind bend - often moving too fast - now have to go on the wrong side of the road to avoid stopping buses, and then have to slam on the brakes to avoid running over mothers with prams struggling to cross the road because there is no fecking lollipop lady any fecking more.

When the trunk road is opened, and our main road is reopened, traffic will no doubt return to the previously high levels. There will still be no lollipop lady.

I pointed out to the Council that perhaps while the road is closed, they could have put in some traffic calming measures in the run-up to the bend.

The response, from the Manager of Transportation Planning no less, was "Oh we never thought of that, we were going to put in some traffic calming, but we were going to wait until we reopened the road".

Me: "What? You were going to re-open the road, and then close it again to put in the traffic calming?"

Him: "Er...yes. So then we could monitor the level of traffic before and after we put them in."

Me: "I see. Will you also be monitoring the levels of dead bodies littering the road after you re-open the road without any traffic calming?".

Him: "Probably not, no".

Cnuts.
(Reverend Fister "a disciplined fuckwit", Fri 27 Jul 2007, 11:12, Reply)