After reading Gary Gerard's letter Saturday, I am of the opinion he is neutral, but what I hear is that it boils down to safety and convenience for those planes using the airport. Well, for me that is a major factor, too, but for the number of cars traveling that road daily.
Yes, it is definitely an inconvenience to have to drive maybe 3 miles in either direction to get to town. You take 3 miles in and 3 miles out everyday of the year and that is an extra 2,190 miles a year. And at the price of gas today that is no savings. But the safety issues are an even greater factor. Your alternate route is either to go to 175E, which is a winding curving road heavily surrounded with deer population, or go to Ind. 15.
Ind. 15 is a already heavily traveled road, with a large population of semis, and when you divert all the traffic from CR 100E you will create a monster of traffic trying to get into Warsaw. Not to mention the fact that the railroad tracks play an important factor, with trains blocking the tracks at several times during the week for long slow-moving trains or stopped trains. CR 250N and CR 350N do have lights to get out on 15 but several of the other roads do not and it is very hard to get out on Ind. 15 as it is now. Being a school bus driver I know for a fact that the tracks can sometimes hold us up anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes. As for the school bus traffic, you are asking the busses that travel north to Leesburg to have to go over railroad tracks an extra 4 times a day, because the bus garage is located south of the proposed closure and the Leesburg school district is north of the closure all on the east side of the railroad tracks. This will also add more miles on the busses, and be an added cost to the school corporation.
Now my real issue for all this is that the will put the citizens from the northeast quadrant of the county at jeopardy when ambulances are trying to get to the hospital. CR 100E is a main artery to the hospital, and the Leesburg fire department also services the areas south of the mentioned suggested road closure, leaving those people in jeopardy. With the train tracks added into the factor and timing, an emergency can now be a matter of life or death.
I sat one day last week for just 5 minutes and counted the cars that traveled South on that stretch of road into Warsaw at 8 a.m. and it was about 45 cars. That was just five minutes. I think that we need to see if this is worth inconveniencing five airplanes or hundreds of people a day. Is that really progress?
I am hearing that most of the pilots and companies can still get in and out safely, and that Zimmer would benefit the most because it has the largest plane. Well, what I am not hearing from either the airport or city of Warsaw or any of these companies is what studies have they done to build an alternate road at the end of the runway or tunnel to keep the people in the NE part of the county safe and not inconvenienced. We pay taxes; we generate revenue for area businesses, and if inconvenienced, we may go elsewhere. Where are the studies, or is this just poor planning?
