Neighborhood drivers will probably have noted that traffic counters are out on Montgomery Ave (blocks west of N. Monroe). With any luck, these are the prelude to the ambitious traffic circles that the Emerson-Garfield Neighborhood Council proposed about a year ago.

A bit of background: We’ve had to push just to get this far. Initially, we received a suggestion from the relevant city department that if the traffic light at the Montgomery/Monroe intersection seemed to be the cause of the speeding — that is, people were accelerating down Montgomery to make the green light — then they should just remove the traffic light.

Yep, you read that right. The city proposed simply removing the traffic light at an incredibly busy residential/arterial intersection and the only designated pedestrian crossing in the 20 blocks between NW Boulevard and Garland. We firmly nixed that suggestion, and so the traffic counters were (slowly) rolled out.

After all this, we hope that the number of cars logged by the counters will be enough to justify the traffic circles.