Editor, The Transcript:

I doubt that responding to the traffic needs of the community should cause as much controversy as the humps and circles have in Norman. If the traffic division had spent a little time and money on speed limit signs before they implemented all this insanity, we would have been more likely to accept them as necessary and proper. The truth is these people are incompetent and we deserve better.

It has been clear for some time that their thinking is that 'traffic impediments' is traffic control. Lately they have worked in obstructions and even hazards. At the corner of Oakhurst and Elmhurst is a great example. There they have placed one of their circles, and inside, planted shrubbery that overhangs the circle's curbs and have grown to nine feet tall. No way to see over or around.

I know we must have been saving many thousands of dollars each month by hiring sack-boys and hat-check-girls to program our expensive smart traffic controls and to make decisions that have led to the humps and circles, but maybe it's time to re-think that policy. Real traffic engineers just have to make better decisions. We would be angry if our sack boys routinely put a gallon jug of milk on top of our eggs and bread. We should be really put off by the idiocy of these expensive, bone-headed implementations. On the PlaySchool Town board on which these folks prototype humps and circles, it's fun to push the little cars over and around them. In the real world they cause confusion and even wrecks.

In the next few days you will find yourself somewhere like the red light at the corner of McGee and Lindsay wondering why, with lights that can sense your car's presence, have you been sitting there for 2 minutes with cars stacked up all around you and absolutely no traffic in the other direction. You then remember that Sam's Club has no bag-boys. We know where they're hiding.

MARK PHILLIPS

Norman