Downtown Port Angeles A Mess

Well, it worked. Let’s see, we’ll tear down both of the Eighth Street bridges at the same time. This will funnel all cross-town traffic through downtown Port Angeles. Then, at the same time, we’ll schedule the construction work on our downtown $14 million bus depot.

And that’s not all: Let’s also schedule downtown sidewalk construction at the same time, so that the main 2-lane streets can be narrowed to one lane. Everyone who's trying to get from Point A to Point B will have to go downtown, and when they get there they’ll have to sit in a traffic jam. A Perfect Storm.

One merchant on Front Street said he asked several weeks ago how long that lane on Front Street would be closed, and they told him “two more weeks.” A few days ago they told him again “two more weeks.” Next summer they’ll probably be saying “two more weeks.”

And now apparently several state regulations prohibit the city government from providing any economic assistance to downtown merchants whose businesses are suffering as a result. Too bad there weren’t any state agencies to intervene when Port Angeles was scheduling all of these projects for the exact same time.