I’m sure everyone in town has noticed the new (though not yet functional) traffic lights and their accompanying pole in our major intersection, where Mountain Road meets Main Street; they’re hard to miss. Uglier additions to our town center are hard to imagine. In a small town such as ours, one with a beautiful historic district carefully monitored, it’s hard to understand why a less obtrusive design could not have been found.
Since Main Street is also a state highway, I assume the Town of Suffield must have had limited input into the decision making, and surely the new system has some improvements over the old one, technically speaking. It certainly is no improvement in aesthetic terms–far from it. Of course, change is often difficult to accept when one has no control over it. But we all use that intersection almost every day, often multiple times in a day, and there is no escaping the looming arm directly in front of the library. I wonder whether in time we will get used to it? Not me!
Jane Shipp
Editor of the Month